But that is exactly backward, and it is the belief that abusers rely on most.

The photograph of my correctly buttoned shirt, the ink mark under my watch, the auto-syncing album — those were not acts of paranoia.

They were an audit.

They were me finally granting my own experience the same respect I had spent a decade granting a spreadsheet: the respect of checking the facts instead of accepting the story.

And the facts, once I bothered to collect them, told the truth in about ten minutes.

The truth was always there, in the underlying reality, waiting to be checked.