I don’t know why I’m posting this. Probably for some externalized form of cognitive reframing. Or just to offload. Last week, carrying a quad-stack of plates — for table seven, the family with the screaming baby and the dad who kept snapping his fingers — I felt it. A sharp, localized pain in my chest. Not quite a pinch, more of a sudden, deep compression. I nearly dropped the whole tray. My first thought wasn’t the food, or my job, or the customers, but a singular, primal fear: *cardiac event*. I spent the rest of my shift in a dissociative state, running through differentials. My hands were shaking so badly I almost poured coffee on Mrs. Henderson’s silk blouse. When I got home, I immediately checked my pulse. Then again. Then I used the pulse oximeter my mother bought me when I had that flu last winter. My heart rate was elevated, obviously, from the stress, but not dangerously so. Still, the feeling persisted. A low-grade hum of dread. It’s been almost a week now. I’ve been monitoring my heart rate obsessively. Checking it when I wake up, after walking to the bus, before bed. Sometimes I feel that phantom pain again, a ghost of the initial sensation. My mother called yesterday. Asked if I’d started looking at houses yet. Said my cousin just got promoted at the bank, and his wife is due in November. I just stared at my phone, watching the numbers on the oximeter. My heart rate was 98 bpm. Rest. Just sitting. I don’t know if it’s a physical problem or psychosomatic. Or something else entirely. Maybe just the weight of everything. The pressure. The endless expectations. My parents want me to find a husband, buy a house, have kids. My manager wants me to pick up more shifts. I just want to make it through the day without feeling like my chest is going to collapse.