I think stress has stopped being an event and become my body’s default setting

Dear Delyara, Jaw tight. Shoulders raised. Heart quicker than it needs to be. Noise entering too sharply. Decision-making feeling expensive. Sleep light. Patience thin. That subtle sense of being half-braced even in safe rooms. I don’t think I’m only having stressful weeks anymore. I think my body has learned stress too fluently. That scares me. Because when something becomes constant enough, it stops announcing itself clearly. It becomes background. Personality. “Just how I am.” That’s what I’m frightened of — not one hard day, but how normal all this has started to feel from inside it. I do not want tension to become the most natural language my nervous system speaks. And yet, some days, I think it already is.