My Body Still Knows Fear Too Fast

Dear Delyara, Before logic. Before context. Before kindness has had a chance to enter. A wrong tone. A man too close. A certain silence. A face changing. A voice hardening. And my body is already there — smaller, careful, strategic, less present. I hate that. Not because I expect healing to be tidy. Because it is humiliating to know so much and still react so quickly in old ways. To feel adult in thought and still ancient in the body. To know a room is not the room that hurt you and still feel some part of yourself behaving as if survival depends on getting the tone exactly right. That speed of fear is exhausting. And it steals dignity in moments no one else even notices are loaded.