On Toilets and Indignity
I am driving home on Route 1, a two-lane road which goes from 35 mph closer to town to 55 mph along the more residential section. Between here and home are three traffic lights. If I can just get to and through them, I could be home in three minutes. But the heat has already started to build in my body, and worse, there is unpleasant movement in my abdomen. The pressure is building. Even though it is early spring, I put the air conditioning on at the highest fan setting and direct it to my face which has started to sweat quite heavily. If I can cool down, I can possibly buy two more minutes, and make it. I can leave the car running, leave the driver’s side door open in the driveway, run inside, and be relieved of my pain and discomfort.
But no. My hairline now damp, I have rolled up my sleeves and as I shift in my seat, I know there is now no more time to wait. Not more than 10–15 seconds at the most which means I am driving frantically looking for a place I can safely pull over. My attention is fractured, both on the road and searching through strategy. Dreams of a restroom are futile. I know this road forwards and backwards, how far it is between public bathrooms, between home and here, and I am nowhere near either. So, I have no choice. It is dangerous to continue driving in pain, filled with anxiety and dread, paying scant attention to the actual driving conditions before me.
I pull left into the empty parking lot of a now shuttered rotisserie roaster restaurant. Once the decision to do so has been made, it is a race against my body which anticipates what I have done and accelerates its own plans. I do not even have time to get out of the car and hide behind some bushes. Doubled over in pain I awkwardly reach around for the large towel I always carry in the car, place it under me as a barrier between my jeans and the car seat, and hope that when I exit my car at home, none of the neighbors will witness what has happened. I hope that the car seat will not be ruined and will need minimal cleaning. I hope that the relief I will feel in just one second will be worth the deep and lingering indignity.
That is the sanitized version of what happened years ago, and I still feel the shame.
Is there anything more socially taboo, more humiliating, more embarrassing, than losing control of one’s bowels? We know it’s not for public discussion, nor polite conversation but it must be talked about. It is worse than what you imagine, and our world needs more empathy.
Like millions of others, I have a functional gastrointestinal disorder that has no cure and no identifiable cause. My gut betrays me randomly, unpredictably, at any moment. It could be for a week straight or not for months. When it does, the dagger could strike 20 seconds after I eat or 12 hours later when I experience immediate and repetitive episodes of painful diarrhea that can last an hour or all day or for two weeks. Once, within a four hour span, I made 11 trips to the bathroom, left exhausted, sore, and dehydrated.
I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about access to bathrooms, way more than the average person does. For every event I attend, every building I enter, every place I want to go or be, I worry about toilets, locations and availability. I greatly prefer venturing to somewhere I’ve been before because I know that just in case, I have access to what I may need. I know how far away the toilet is from where I am, if I can make it in under 30 seconds, maybe how many stalls, if I can be overheard, if there’s any privacy. It boggles my mind that in 2021, access to a toilet isn’t some kind of basic human right. During an episode, without a specific letter from the state of Connecticut, I can be denied entry to restrooms in many establishments. In the midst of an episode, however, I may not have time to produce said letter.
Any outings to unfamiliar places, especially in the outdoors with that kind of not knowing, can be enough to simply cancel. So if you’re asking me to devote a whole day to an excursion by boat, I’m going to have to pass unless . . . . Camping — another prospect rife with anxiety. The menu of options quickly whittles down, even for an introvert. Quiet environments, environments where there is only one bathroom, environments in which the bathroom has no fan, environments in which the bathroom wall is thin and right next to whoever, become a personal hell, as is airplane travel, and bus travel in Europe.
European bus companies seem to believe that no one needs a toilet on board and that drivers can stop in time, even in the rural countryside, for anyone to make it to a toilet. This confuses me. Do Europeans not ever get diarrhea like Americans do? Not one designer of buses has had his or her own gastrointestinal issues? Has there never been a gastrointestinal incident on a European bus which sparked a conversation at corporate, “Hey, maybe we could avoid this by putting toilets in the buses.” Any person with IBS can tell you how much of life they have missed because of such worries.
Businesses which take pride in their No Public restroom signs can actually induce a flare up, ruining errands, shopping, and tourism. And dating? Dates often center around food. Third dates are a logistical nightmare. When is the right time to tell a potential love interest, someone who will be hanging out near the same body parts that have failed you over and over again, that these body parts they are drawn to may turn on them as well?
I worry about food. I worry that I will pay royally for eating something I shouldn’t have in front of someone I barely know. I worry about when we are eating, how and where we are eating, and what we are eating. Forget ethnic. Just give me sticky white rice and hold the eating preference questions and perseverations on my missing out. We ibsers well know ours is a life of constant denial. Certainly no rich desserts, no cheesecake, which I love but only eat alone at home. Ours is a life of postponement and solitude.
