For the first time all day, I felt the ground turn solid under me.

It was a small distinction, in words, and it changed everything about how I sat in my own skin.

A victim is something that happens to you; it is passive, it is the role Noreen and Craig had cast me in for five years and the role they were counting on me to keep playing — the woman things were done to, who absorbed and endured and eventually forgave because forgiving was easier than fighting.

A plaintiff is something you choose to be.

A plaintiff acts.

A plaintiff gathers evidence and signs documents and makes the machinery of consequence turn.