Something small can still throw me back into my old life

Dear Delyara, I wish trauma looked dramatic enough that people would recognise it more easily in ordinary life. Instead it often looks like a woman freezing for two seconds in a perfectly normal kitchen because her husband closed a cupboard too hard, or because someone at work used the exact voice an old person once used when they were about to make her feel small. I am tired of the body remembering before the mind can explain. Nothing terrible happened today. That is true. Still, my pulse changed, my stomach tightened, my whole system shifted into that old alertness that makes the world feel edged and dangerous even when nothing visible is wrong. Then I have to carry on. Answer normally. Cook normally. Speak normally. That might be the hardest part of all.