E.J. Bishop
We suffer more often in imagination than in reality. Seneca
A Case Study in Catastrophic Overthinking
It was half-past midnight, I rose from bed because I had to pee. This is not remarkable. What WAS remarkable is the gravity of the decision that awaited me in the bathroom — a decision that, if mishandled, could jeopardize an otherwise solid relationship.
The question was painfully simple. The consequences were not.
To flush, or not to flush.
A choice that, during daylight hours, barely qualifies as a thought suddenly carried the weight of a municipal infrastructure debate.
If I flushed, I would risk making too much noise. Noise could wake the new boyfriend. Being awakened could irritate him. Irritation could spark doubts. Doubts, left unattended, could metastasize into a breakup delivered with the solemn announcement: “I just can’t live like this.”
However, not flushing would lead to a quiet trip to the can, introducing its own catastrophic timeline. If he woke first and encountered an unflushed scene, he might interpret it as a sign of moral decay. This, too, could result in the relationship ending — possibly with him packing a suitcase while mumbling something about “minimum standards of civilization.”
One would think that having to pee at half past 12 would be a straightforward nothingburger. Instead, it morphed into a full-fledged psychological referendum on my worthiness as a partner.
I lingered there longer than any rational adult would, weighing the risk and considering the odds while under the dim glare of the bathroom nightlight. I anticipated scenarios, counterarguments, public statements, and the inevitable “Where did this all go wrong?” post-breakup analysis. In every version, it all came back to the flush.
Eventually, I returned to bed without resolving the matter — except to confirm, yet again, that I am fully able to transform a five-second decision into a sweeping epic of imagined consequences.
Let the record show: overthinking is not simply a personality quirk. It is an endurance sport, performed in bathrooms across America, while the rest of the population sleeps peacefully unaware.
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