I think stress has become so normal in me that I now notice calm the way other people

Dear Delyara, When my shoulders drop, I notice. When I breathe fully, I notice. When a whole evening passes without my chest tightening over something small, I notice. Calm has become the unusual state, the event, the exception worth marking. That is backwards. And yet it is how I am living. Stress is no longer only a response in me. It is a pattern. A body style. A constant quiet preparation for impact that makes even ordinary days feel subtly threatening by the end of them if enough little things have already touched me. I do not want this to be my baseline. The fact that it has become one anyway is one of the hardest truths I am currently facing.