The Suspicious Calm

Day 35 – December 28, 2025

Something deeply weird has been happening lately.

Calm makes me suspicious.

I noticed it this afternoon.

The apartment was quiet. The day had been gentle. Nothing bad had happened. No stressful call. No heavy conversation. No strange energy. Just a peaceful Sunday sitting there minding its own business.

And instead of relaxing, my brain started scanning the room like a security guard who doesn’t trust how nice the neighborhood suddenly got.

Very normal. Very grounded. Very not at all the behavior of a woman whose nervous system has been through some things.

It’s strange realizing how much trauma rewires your instincts. When something violent happens to you, your body gets very good at pattern recognition. Very good at anticipating danger. Very good at saying, “Hey babe, I know we’re technically safe right now, but let’s stay ready in case life tries something ugly.”

Which is helpful until life actually does get quiet again.

Then your body doesn’t always get the memo.

So peace starts feeling suspicious. Not bad exactly. Just… unfamiliar. Like the kind of silence that makes you glance up because surely something is about to go wrong.

At one point today I actually caught myself thinking, Why does everything feel so calm?

Which is objectively insane when calm is exactly what I’ve been craving for months.

But I think that’s part of healing no one really talks about enough. It’s not just learning how to survive pain. It’s learning how to stop flinching at peace.

Learning that the quiet moment is not a setup.
That softness is not a trick.
That not every good thing is the hallway before something bad enters.

Roger, for the record, has absolutely no issue with any of this.

His emotional philosophy appears to be: if the room is quiet, take a nap in it immediately and with full commitment. So that’s what he did. Curled up beside me like a tiny heated blanket with opinions and no trauma-based distrust of stillness whatsoever.

Watching him sleep so peacefully reminded me of something important.

Life didn’t end.

It changed. Brutally in some ways. Deeply. Permanently in others.

But it didn’t end.

There are still quiet afternoons. Still soft light through the windows. Still dogs who love you like you are the single greatest thing to ever happen to Earth.

That matters more than I knew before all of this.

Tonight the calm feels a little less suspicious.

Not fully trusted. Let’s not get carried away.

But less suspicious.

And honestly? That feels like progress.

Chaos in one hand. Grace in the other.

And tonight, I’m letting the calm stay without interrogating it first.