Letter to whoever finds this place

I wanted to personally reach out to this community myself before I hand the reins over to Mr. Peters. Twelve hours ago, your community was nowhere on my radar.

What was on my radar was fear that what I was doing was not working — that it was not reaching, was not connecting.

Then I opened my mail and saw a letter from Mr. Peters. Two weeks old.

For months, all I had been praying for was someone to notice me. And for two weeks I may or may not have, unknowingly, been doing the same thing to a man who — like me — is trying to spread awareness for a cause.

What I saw was a man who had noticed me, while I was busy noticing other things.

It was a polite request for a backlink to a resource page on his firm's website. Inside the request was a question I had not heard anyone else on this site ask. The question was worth a wing. So here is the wing.

This section is the very least I can do in return. When I was most afraid I would never make a connection, Mr. Peters showed up.

I am not looking deep into his reasons. Those are on him to lay out. Those are on him to educate you on.

This is his link back. This is now.

I am here to help this community grow, but I will not grow it. I do not want to. I am not going to.

What I am growing — or, better yet, hoping to grow, hoping to make — is connections. This is my attempt with your community, through Mr. Peters.

I am the messenger here. Unpaid. Unbiased.

I want to say this clearly while the wing is brand new and nobody else has written in it yet: this room is not mine. I do not live with what this room is about. The room next door — the articles — is anchored in research, and I will continue to publish in there under my own name when the evidence warrants it. The room across the hall — outreach — is for letters that go to specific named people, and I will continue to write those too when the right name comes up. But this room, the third room, is meant for the voice this subject deserves, and that voice is not mine. It is yours. It is Mr. Peters's. It is whoever comes after him.

I am writing this one piece so the room is not empty when the people I built it for arrive. That is the only reason I am here. The next thought published under this URL will not be from me. It should not be.

I built this and I am giving it away — but I am holding the URL, for the simple reason that no one will ever track you here. No ads. No email capture. No cookies. Nothing.

Your community has dealt with enough shit. You will not have to here.

You owe Mr. Peters for that.

Now it is yours, Mr. Peters's, and mine — our responsibility to grow it, foster it, be safe with it.

My promise to you is simple. Two parts.

The first: everything you read on this site is 100% factual. You will never have to fact-check anything we publish — although I highly recommend you do.

The second: I will reciprocate any effort your community puts into this. That is a promise. If that is zero, that is zero. If you have ideas and you want to do this, I am here. I am throwing darts everywhere I can — trying to tether people together, instead of machines.

If you are reading this because you do work that belongs in this room — clinical, legal, research, survivor — the number is in the navigation. The keys are real. The byline is yours.

If you are reading this because something in you came looking, the resources page on this site is where the actual help lives. Crisis lines, therapist directories, the 988 number. This wing is not therapy. It is a place to be read seriously by a publication that takes the subject seriously, after you have already done the survival work somewhere else.

Twelve hours ago I had not heard of you. I am writing this so that the next person who has not heard of you yet might land here and learn something the way I just did.

Mr. Peters was the first to find me.

Mr. Peters — this is your receipt. Do whatever you want with it. Just don't waste it.

— Character零号