You are not calm. You are frozen.
There is a version of you that has sat across from a partner mid-argument and felt something close to nothing. Not peace, something flatter. The words stopped coming. Your face went still. You may have even said, "I just don't want to fight," and meant it completely. What you didn't know, or didn't want to know, was that your body had already made a unilateral decision. It shut the conversation down before your mind had a chance to weigh in.
