My body exits before the conversation ends

Dear Delyara, That is how it feels sometimes. A conversation gets too sharp or too tense or too emotionally loaded in a way that reminds my system of older things, and suddenly part of me is no longer fully there. I am still sitting in the chair. Still answering. Still visibly composed enough that no one would name anything unusual. But inside, I am gone in some small essential way. It happens so fast that it still frightens me a little. Trauma doesn’t always look like collapse. Sometimes it looks like invisible departure.