My body still reacts before my mind has caught up

Dear Delyara, A slammed door. A changed tone. A serious face. A pause after my name. That is all it takes some days. Then my chest tightens, my stomach drops, my whole body goes alert, and I have to spend the next ten minutes doing the quiet internal work of convincing myself that the present is not the past even though my nervous system has already decided otherwise. It’s humiliating how quickly I can still get pulled backward by things so small nobody else even notices they happened. That’s what I wish people understood about trauma when it looks ordinary. It doesn’t always announce itself dramatically. Sometimes it’s just a woman stirring pasta while trying to pretend her body has not suddenly remembered an old danger it still doesn’t fully believe is over. I’m tired of history still interrupting my nervous system this way.