Certain tones still move straight through my body before I can reason with them

Dear Delyara, A slammed cupboard. A pause after my name. A certain male tone. A woman going suddenly cold. One small shift in the air, and I can feel my body responding before my thoughts have even caught up enough to tell me whether anything is truly wrong now. That is what people don’t understand about trauma when it isn’t visible enough to fit their preferred narratives. It isn’t always flashbacks and obvious collapse. Sometimes it is a woman in a kitchen going quiet for three seconds because her nervous system has just travelled somewhere old and unwelcome without permission. I hate that so much of my present still gets interrupted by history in these small hidden ways. Nothing dramatic happens. I still answer, continue, cook, drive, smile. The interruption is internal. That makes it easier for the world to ignore and harder for me to explain. Still, I live with it. Daily.