If You Are in Danger

First: if you are in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services now. This book can wait.

And if the danger is your own despair — if you find yourself thinking of ending your life, or that the world would be better without you in it — that is an emergency too, and it comes before everything else on this page. Contact a suicide or crisis line, or emergency services, now. You do not need a number ready; emergency services can connect you, and “Resources and Help” at the back of this book lists crisis lines by country.

Second: if the danger is the person you live with, or someone with access to your devices, know this before you read on — the most dangerous moment is often not while you stay, but when you begin to leave. Do not announce a departure. Make a safety plan first, with help.

Find your country’s domestic-violence helpline at findahelpline.com or nomoredirectory.org, and call from a device the other person cannot see or reach — a friend’s phone, a library computer, a work line. Not the shared laptop. Not the phone they pay for.

Third: be careful with this book itself. If someone monitors what you read, this title in a browsing history or on a nightstand can tell them what you have understood. Read it where they cannot see it. Everything this book says about surveillance applies to your copy of it.

Where to go from here, in order:

• The Short Version, a few pages on — the whole book in one sitting, for the day when one sitting is all you have room for.
• Resources and Help, the last appendix — helplines and organizations, by situation.
• Recognizing It From the Inside — if you are not sure whether what is happening to you has a name.
• Building a Record — how to document safely. It begins with the same rule this page does: the safety plan comes before the paper trail.

The rest of this book is the proof. You do not need the proof to use the tools, and you do not owe anyone an explanation for starting with the pages that keep you safe.