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Reinventing the wheel. That's exactly what I felt like I was doing when I would spend enless time around the clock trying to remain one step ahead of my soon to be ex-husband. Sure I know now many more things than I knew then, back when I was in the middle of living that nightmare. Why is that when you really need the help no one is there. So you attempt on your own to protect yourself and your family. You do everything wrong. You worry about things you don't have to, and the things your aren't even remotely thinking could be a danger to you are actually the things that are the biggest threat to your slipping from paranoid fear into realistic fear. My paranoid fear was the kind of fear you have when you swear someone is about to bust down your door when all you heard was likely the creaking of your home settling down for the evening. Realistic fear is the kind of fear you feel when someone is pounding very aggressively on your door screaming "bitch let me in" and in the same breath saying "I just want to talk to you." This is real fear. Compound this fear by the sudden realization while running to grab the phone to call the police that your phone is not in service. Real fear is not being able to alert anyone that you need help and you now must figure out how to get help from the outside, the same outside where he is, while you are trapped on the inside trying to keep him in the very place you need to be to get help. Reinventing the wheel. Why did I not know that you could dial 911 from a disconected phone.This is not the kind of thing that they teach you in school. Or of course you could learn it the hard way like I did, after the fact. The need of this knowledge and much more is in the minds of many women who have experienced domestic violence and lived to tell about it. Or we could only hope they would tell about it. I know that had even one of those women who had already invented that wheel would have told me about dialing 911 on an out of service phone, things would have been different that night.