I can do this.

The worst part of an avoided phone call happens before the ringing stops. The dialling, the two seconds of tone, the opening line assembled and reassembled while it rings — and then somebody says hello and you are simply in it, doing the thing, in an ordinary voice.

Almost everything difficult has that shape. The doorway is the expensive part, and the doorway is short. What comes after runs at a completely different scale from the run-up, and is often over before the dread has caught up with the news.