My mind knew I was safe.

My body had not yet been convinced.

I tell this part honestly because the stories we tell about women who escape abuse tend to end at the courthouse, with the conviction, as though justice and healing were the same thing.

They are not.

I won my case, thoroughly.

And I still woke gasping at footsteps for months afterward, because the law could punish what was done to me but could not undo what it had done.

Healing was a separate project, slower and quieter and entirely my own, and I want any woman reading this who is still gasping at footsteps long after her own escape to know: that does not mean you are broken, or weak, or failing to move on.