I think stress has become my body’s default language

Dear Delyara, Jaw tight. Shoulders up. Sleep shallow. Startle response too quick. Patience thinner. Mind already racing before the day has properly begun. This is no longer occasional in me. It is patterned. That’s what scares me. Not one stressful week. The possibility that my body has learned to live in stress so constantly that calm now feels unusual enough to be noticed like weather. I still function. That is what makes it easy for other people to miss and hard for me to stop. I don’t want stress to become my most fluent internal language. Some days, I think it already has.