the thing with, "if I stopped showing up/posting/participating in chat/going online, would anyone notice?"
is you have to realize that the only way for you to actually know this information is to ask.
if your goal is to see if anyone is going to reach out, which is not the same as someone noticing your disappearance or being worried about you, you have to be prepared for what happens if nobody reaches out. I am very serious about this. not every friend is going to reach out, and maybe nobody will. maybe they are trying to respect your space and privacy. maybe they think you are mad at them. maybe they are super busy. maybe they were too occupied with their own life to notice. you have literally no way of knowing unless you ask.
what do you plan on doing next if nobody reaches out? because it happened to me. I disappeared for weeks. rough stuff was happening. nobody reached out. I was crushed. I felt so alone. and then I moved on and became a stronger person with a better understanding that feeling bad in silence is the absolute worst way to try to get support from people.
if you want to be reassured by your friends, you have to talk to them. if your friends do not communicate with you in the way you want, you have to talk to them. do not play the disappearing game. nobody is telepathic. nobody can read your mind and guess what you want them to do if you disappear. you have to communicate or everyone fucking loses.
this post pretty much says it all BUT! for people not used to doing this - you have to not only talk to your friends, you have to be direct and clear! you have to say something like, "i need to talk about what's going on with me" or "I'm having a hard time right now and really need (xyz)".
it's crushing to reach out to your friends only to accidentally do it so vaguely or stoically that they don't catch on you're asking them for help. avoid doing that to yourself.
recently i tagged a friend to invite him to an exhibition and he declined, saying he was having a horrific mental health patch and that he was currently too mental to go anywhere & some details about mental health services that i won't go into. so, naturally, i said: hey that sucks ass, i've been there, is there anything i can do that will give you some reprieve? would you like distraction or a sympathetic ear or a box of crockery to smash or what? and he really, really helpfully told me what would be useful, which was distracting conversation when he's alone in the house. so, i thanked him for being able to tell me and for letting me help him.
which i think is the other side of stuff like this. it's not just "you gotta be able to communicate that you're doing bad and need help" it's also you need to be able to work out between you what kind of help you need" and you, the person being reached out to, need to reinforce, positively, that letting you know when shit's fucked is a good, non-burdensome thing for them to do. that you appreciate being reached out to and asked directly for help. it's like, it's a process. you have to keep affirming things. none of us is going to internalise anything from a single incident other than "wow, feels bad man".
