Fight or flight

There's a feeling I get in times of extreme emotion. It's a very physical event. My breathing stops, and my whole body freezes. I get a tingling in all my extremities. In fact, it's more than a tingling. It's like an electrical current goes through all of my fingers and all of my toes. And the top of my head. I've had this feeling quite a few times this month. Generally I get it in situations of fear:

• When I nearly careened into a car in front of me which had to brake suddenly for another car.
• About two minutes after taking this picture
  
  
  
  
  
  when Marie tumbled head-over-feet down five of those steps. (She was fine.)
• When Jack wasn't in the line of children coming out of his school. (Silly misunderstanding, quickly cleared up.)

Sometimes it is prompted by embarrassment:

• When I realised I was starting to tell a story I wasn't meant to be telling. (I stopped in time. Yay!)
  

And then sometimes it's pure lust:

• That scene in the tent in Brokeback Mountain. On a big screen. Oh boy. And oh boy. Yes, oh both boys. That must be a serious contender for sexiest ever scene in movie history.
  
  
  
  

I guess I'm a bit tense these days. On tenterhooks. Highly sensitive. Whatever. My fight or flight response is too quick to appear. I need to remember to breathe, take a minute, be in the now. I'm just not sure where to start. Here, and now, I suppose.