When Brian said the word cloud, I watched Brenda understand that the one arena in which she had always been invincible — the arena of competing stories — had just been removed from the board, and that what remained was an arena she had no skills for at all, because she had never once in her life had to survive being simply, unarguably seen.

Every abuser I have since learned anything about depends on that same thing: on it being their word against yours, on the fog, on the absence of a record.

And the single most powerful act available to a person trapped as I was — more powerful than confronting them, more powerful than trying to make them admit it — is to quietly create a record they cannot edit.

The texts I saved.