My body still reacts to old danger in rooms where there is no actual danger now

Dear Delyara, A loud male voice. A pause after my name. A cupboard slammed harder than necessary. A face changing shape before I know why. That’s all it takes some days. My nervous system gets there before my mind does. Tight chest. Quicker breathing. A sudden internal readiness as if something is about to happen that I will have to survive correctly. Then the rational part arrives seconds later and says, no, not this room, not this time, not this person. But the body has already moved. That gap is what exhausts me. People think trauma is always visible and dramatic. Sometimes it is just a woman stirring soup while privately having to talk her own body back out of history because a sound reached too far into the past too quickly. Nothing visible happens. That doesn’t mean nothing happened. It happened in me. Again.