The body leaves before I do

Dear Delyara, That is how some difficult moments still work for me. The body leaves first. The breath changes. The muscles prepare. The voice gets smaller or flatter. Attention narrows. Time shifts in that strange quiet way it sometimes does when a room feels emotionally unsafe before the mind has fully put language around why. From the outside, I probably still look composed. Inside, I have already gone somewhere older. That distance between appearance and experience is hard to explain to people who haven’t lived in it.