Old hurt still edits my volume before I enter the room

Dear Delyara, Not literal volume. Presence. I can feel it happening before anything even begins. A slight internal reduction. A softening of edges. A caution about how much truth to bring in at once. A reflexive wish to enter the room in the most harmless form possible. That is not always conscious choice. Sometimes it feels older than thought. I think past wounds do not only survive in triggers. They survive in anticipatory editing. In how you shape yourself before you even know whether shaping is necessary. In how you offer a pre-reduced version of your humanity to spaces that haven’t yet proven they deserve that reduction. I hate how automatic that still is in me. And I grieve it.