Lately I've been realizing how much of my mental energy used to go toward bracing for impact that never came. Now it's… different. The body remembers the flinch even after the mind has moved on. It takes so much conscious work to un-teach that bracing. Years, maybe. And then, sometimes, it just...loosens. The waiting was almost worse than the blow. At least the blow was finite. The hypervigilance though...it leached into everything, even the good. Now, I notice when my shoulders are creeping up to my ears, and I can tell them to relax. Most of the time.