Got a "we need to talk" text from my landlord. And immediately, the worst-case scenario locked in: eviction. This was it. I was being kicked out. No other interpretation even entered my mind.
I spent the entire day in a low-grade panic. Running through my lease in my head, wondering what I'd done wrong, mentally rehearsing my defense, calculating how quickly I'd need to find a new place. A full internal crisis, hour by hour.
Then the conversation finally happened. He wanted to discuss switching my water tank supplier. That was it. Plumbing logistics. A minor operational update about where the building's water comes from.
The gap between the anxiety and the actual topic was, in hindsight, disproportionate by several orders of magnitude. I had prepared an entire emotional and legal defense for a chat about water tanks. "We need to talk" should really come with a subject line, because my nervous system cannot keep absorbing these hits over supplier changes.