I applied for grants until my eyes burned. I sat in county offices while clerks looked at me with polite skepticism and asked whether I really wanted to take on “that kind of clientele.” I smiled the way bookkeepers do when sales reps try to charm them past math. I answered every question twice and brought twice the documentation they asked for. I met with advocates from a domestic violence center in the next county who taught me more in two afternoons than I had learned in forty-two years about what it actually means to leave an abuser. Not the dramatic cinematic leaving. The real one. The paperwork. The custody traps. The bank-account sabotage. The phone tracking. The pets left behind. The half-finished GEDs. The prescription refills. The school records. The lies abusers tell police. The way terror can look like indecision if you have never had to negotiate it yourself.
Once I understood the scale of the need, I became difficult in all the right ways.