People often talk about trusting your gut, but they rarely talk about how good it can feel when you’re right–and safe–because you did trust it. Especially when you’re dealing with an abusive person. Especially when they don’t realize just how well you understand them.

I’ve kept a rapist’s blanket in the back of my car since the early 1980s. After he was arrested, I took it from where the criminal was living in the basement of the professional building at my old job. Maybe that room was even the scene of the crime. Maybe it wasn’t. If it held evidence, the cops probably took that. What’s left is mine.

It’s an old green wool army blanket. I washed and smudged it. It has thinned and softened over the decades I used it for picnics, as a diaper-changing station, and to hold casseroles in place for the drive to potlucks. It lives in my trunk as a kind of trophy. He didn’t get me. And he probably wanted to. I saw the way he looked at me. So did my then-boyfriend. We left an awkward run-in with him, and my boyfriend said, “I didn’t like the way he was looking at you.” I brushed it off at the time. But no, he was right. That was the look of a predator shopping.

He was locked up. I’m not one of his victims. And if I ever get stranded in a snowstorm, I’ll be warm because I stole a blanket from a rapist. That’s the kind of clarity I’m talking about. That’s how you trust your instincts and win. Even if nobody else saw what you saw. Even if the abuser never knew you saw it coming.