My mother was in a good mood and I still felt tense

Dear Delyara, I spoke to my mother today, and she was perfectly pleasant. And still, I felt my body tighten before she had even said anything important. That’s what history does, I suppose. It trains the body before the mind has a chance to argue. I hate how quickly I become younger around certain people. More careful. More reactive internally. More alert to tiny shifts that other people would not even notice. The conversation was fine. I was not. It is such a confusing thing to love someone and still carry old tension into every room they enter.