There’s something about seeing a number in black and white that makes it more real. You can’t abstract it, minimize it, or pretend you would have needed it anyway if this awful thing didn’t happen.

It’s hard to quantify the friendships lost from being too scared, tired, or angry, the jobs that didn’t call back after an interview because you were so numb that they decided you weren’t passionate, or the networking opportunities that went south because trying to appear normal and enthusiastic takes too much of a physical and emotional toll.

Trauma permeates your life, so the cost spreads out across it, intertwining itself so you can’t tell normal from not, so you start thinking it’s your fault you take so many cabs or insist on the more expensive apartment in the safe neighborhood. Trauma externalizes its cost onto you. This is your problem now.

But then there are these bold, unrelenting numbers. Pelvic floor physical therapy, migraine medication, classes dropped too late in the semester. Legal fees, days off work or class, the co-pay to get your ADA paperwork for school and standardized tests. Discrete expenses eating away at your finances while the trauma does its best to eat away at the rest of you.

They are a stark reminder of the cost you bear that he does not. The cost to use your own body again. The cost of taking care of yourself. The cost of trying to feel safe. The cost of trying to survive.