My life is consumed by mice. If you've ever had a mouse in your apartment and didn't have a panic attack, you're doing better than me.
The first mouse I found wasn't so bad. She looked sad. So I scooped her up humanely and handed her over to maintenance. I had finally gotten over the fact that mice occur in apartments. The second mouse we only saw for a flash, it umping quickly into the cabinet. I called maintenance and ended up with a towel stuffed in a cabinet for two weeks. The two weeks the towel was stuffed, I used to walk faster through the kitchen. I would wake up in the middle of the night, horrified, thinking I heard mice. I would avoid the cabinets linked to said towel and tried to not make eye contact with my furniture.
Today, two more mice appeared. I was woken up by my boyfriend, claiming there were mice stuck to the trap that maintenance laid down. So out of our bedroom I peaked, walking slowly, turning on the light switch. Like a mouse is going to somehow jump up five feet from the floor to bite my face off. Then I heard the squeaking. The awful noise this poor mouse was making was gut wrenching. I felt like I should cuddle it back to happiness. Except it was literally stuck to my fridge.
So up comes our saint of a maintenance man, who the office asked if I knew, to which he and I giggled. He peeled the poor struggling mouse from my fridge as I stood trying not to cry as it pulled as hard as it could to try and get away. I then made lunch and swear I heard a squeak. I literally felt my bones jump inside my body. Not just my heart out of my rib cage, but my bones bounced to the surface of my skin as I called the office for the third time today.
He found nothing. And now I sit and wait. My anxiety is peaked. I'm physically nervous. I took a nap to make up for the fact I was up so early and dreamed of my hero, the maintenance man, finding mice in my apartment.
Moral of the story, if you get anxiety over what people say is "minor," I promise, it isn't just you.