The doors were locked.

I was safe, provably, legally, completely safe, and yet my heart would still slam into a gallop at the sound of footsteps in the hall, and I would lie awake braced against a violence that could no longer reach me, and I felt this as a failure, as weakness, as evidence that I was not healing properly.

My therapist gave me a different way to see it that I have held onto ever since.

She told me that the part of my body still scanning for danger was not broken.