He never hit me, and still I live like my body owes the room caution

Dear Delyara, That’s what makes it so difficult to explain. People understand bruises. They understand obvious violence. What they don’t always understand is what it means to live for years with a person whose anger, contempt, tone, and unpredictability trained your body to remain slightly bent toward survival all the time. He didn’t need to raise a hand often because by the end, my whole nervous system already did the work for him. I became careful. Quieter. Less spontaneous. More eager to prevent. More likely to edit myself before speaking. More likely to apologise for things that were not mine. More likely to feel guilty simply for having a need that might interrupt his mood. I left, eventually. What didn’t leave so easily was the body I built to survive him. That body still walks with me. Still sits down to dinner. Still answers phones. Still hears tones before words. Still expects anger to arrive in rooms where nobody is actually angry. That is abuse too. And it lasts longer than people think.