limbo anxiety
Today, someone from HDB dropped by to let me know there was a leak in my downstairs neighbour’s ceiling, and the cause was most likely my bathroom. But further testing is needed to verify this. So this visit was just to inform me, seek my permission to send someone in to do further testing, and let me know that they’ll be in touch to schedule said test.
I’m not an anxious person. I very rarely spiral. But for some reason, this situation flipped some kind of highkey anxious switch in my brain, and even now I still find myself fretting about it. I was paranoid about water leaking all through my shower. I keep feeling bad for the people downstairs. I keep feeling that I need to do something, but for now, there’s nothing I’m supposed to do.
While taking some deep breaths and wondering why I am so unusually stressed about this, it occurred to me that if I had been informed right there and then that it was my problem and I needed to do something about it, I wouldn’t feel stressed at all. I’d just go and find someone to fix my bathroom waterproofing right away. I think even just having a confirmed follow-up date would at least have given me something concrete to latch on to, but I have nothing now except the sense that I am being a nuisance.
I think most of my friends would agree with me that I rarely go into anxiety spirals, but when I do, it’s usually because I think I’ve made someone mad. Years and years go by and still I am an incurable people-pleaser. Less so than I used to be, I hope, but—still.
I guess what is stressing me out is this combination of the feeling that I’m causing a problem to someone and the inability to do anything about it right away. But, well, this is literally a limbo I’m stuck in right now. A government authority told me to sit and wait. So I have to sit and wait. If there ever was an exercise to train me in patience and also exorcise this unreasonable and exhausting tendency to wallow around in guilt that doesn’t do anyone any good, I don’t think I could’ve invented a better one.