What I Learned From Peeing the Dressing Room Floor
What I Learned From Peeing the Dressing Room Floor:
My Painfully Embarrassing Story About Wasted Opportunity
A few months ago there was this party. It was a theme party with specific colors that everyone had to wear. To the mall! My friends and I declared. So off on an adventure we went. We went store to store in search of the perfect outfits and with every passing store, my bladder said “hey, let’s go!” And every time I’d say, “We can hold off a bit longer.” Seeing how it’s 2019 and malls are practically ghost towns, especially for chubsters like me, it’s no surprise that I didn’t find what I was looking for at the mall. So I disappointingly drove my friends home and headed to my own house where the bathroom awaited me.
That’s When It Happened
As I pulled up at the red light close to my house, I remembered there was a plus sized clothing store around the corner that was going to close in 30 minutes. I can make it! I told myself zooming through the red light and making a sharp u-turn to the store. As I shopped in the store I felt the weight of the water in my bladder grow. I can hold off a little longer, I convinced myself as I pulled on a sexy tight white dress and checked out my perfectly amplified ass in the small dressing room mirror. Suddenly, the slight pressure in my bladder became a heavy set man sitting on a water balloon. I gasped for air, crossing my legs as tight as I could and breathing like a pregnant woman.
Whoot whoot whoom. Whoot whoot whoom.
When I felt a bit of reprieve I began peeling the tight white dress off my body, now damp from my nervous sweating. As I attempted to wriggle the dressing room dress up and off me, my legs still hugging one another for dear life, I felt a warm tingle of dread crawl down my vag, through my panties, and onto my legs. Fuck, I murmured pulling harder at the too tight dress. Who the fuck did I think I was squeezing all this into a damn XL anyway?! I thought as I finally got the dress off and whipped up my own clothes but alas: it was too late. The flood came gushing out of me like the damn Niagara Falls, loudly hitting the linoleum floor and worse of all: leaving a stretch of urine in the air.
What This Tale of Woe Taught Me:
Since this embarrassing event, I do two things:
1. Never step foot in that damn store
2. When I see a fucking bathroom, I go!
The latter has has actually taught me some things about my goals.
The reason I didn’t use the Primark bathroom or any of the mall bathrooms or heck, even the bathroom of the plus size store when I got there is because I thought I was too good for those bathrooms. “I can wait” I told myself. No matter how powerful my urge to pee became I refused to use a bathroom that I didn’t consider up to my standards and look where that got me? Cleaning up my stinky urine off the floor of a dressing room with my favorite freaking jacket.
Turning our noses up at opportunities
Many of us has the mentality that certain opportunities aren’t actually opportunities because they are too small.
I’m not taking that modeling gig, they’re not paying me and it’s just for a portfolio.
I’m not performing at that venue! It only holds 20 people!
So we say no to all the little opportunities, turn our noses up at all the public bathrooms, not realizing we are wasting our talent; that our bladder is about the burst.
I understand the statement “know your worth” trust that’s a motto I tell myself quite regularly but at the same time you can’t squander your talent because nothing is good enough. Social media has a funny way of convincing people that no one struggles: no one ever had to take a pay cut or start small scale. It’s a lie. It’s a flex.
Know your worth means know where your headed: have a vision of your future. But you have to start somewhere to get there.
Not every bathroom will be your house bathroom-comfortable and familiar-and not every bathroom will be a hotel bathroom-fancy and beautiful. But please don’t pee the dressing room floor! Bring your best self to every single venue, modeling gig, or whatever and eventually you’ll be exactly where you want to be.
As for me? I’m headed to the bathroom.
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Dreams Deferred: Standing in the Way of Your Own Goals
What Happens To A Dream Deferred?
My grandmother on my father’s side always dreamed of seeing the Eiffel Tower. She always dreamed leaving her Homeland of Haiti-just for a week or so to go straight to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower. Raised under the strictest patriarchy rules, she was never allowed to travel without the presence of a man. Her first husband- the womanizer- never acknowledged what she wanted and her second husband-the wife beater-was too cruel to take her. When her second husband passed away and she decided she could go on her own “when the time was right,” she began getting these cloudy spots in her right eye. Merde. She murmured when those cloudy spots turned into blurred and impaired vision. She had developed glaucoma, and would never see anything clearly again, let alone the Eiffel Tower.
My father always dreamed of driving across America. Always the taciturn individual, this was the one subject that would make him quite talkative. His goal was retirement. Once he retired from his job he would go, just him and my mom. I was 15 when his eyes started getting cloudy. “Things are different here,” he’d tell his mother. “A couple of surgeries and I’ll be fine,” he assured her. When I turned 17, he stopped being able to drive at night and by the time I hit my freshman year of college, he could no longer drive at all.
A couple of weeks ago, I woke up from a wonderful slumber and half of my left eye wouldn’t work. It was cloudy.
Barriers Between Us and Our Dreams
This isn’t a story of glaucoma. This is a story of dreams deferred.
Every day of our lives is a chance- an opportunity to work towards our goals and find a way to make our wildest dreams come true. And the only person that actually stands in our way is us.
We give people the power to stop us from following our dreams. We set limitations on our goals. Even my dick head grandfather did not hold a gun to my grandmother’s head and tell her she could not go to Paris. She allowed her inner voice to tell her not this year, every single year-even after he died. My father worked at the same company for 20 years, they would have given him a couple of weeks off to have his adventure if he asked, if he pushed for it.
Moving Out of Your Own Way
The point is, we don’t know what tomorrow brings, we never do. Yet all we do is push things off until tomorrow and then blame everyone but ourselves when our lives don’t turn out the way we want it to. Shit, I’ve had a book written and ready to edit for years now yet I allowed my insecurities and fear of rejection to keep me from releasing it to the world. Isn’t that such a fucked up concept? That our own fears and insecurities can hold us back from living our lives?! Our best lives, as the kids say.
Stop pointing the blame at other people and other things and ask yourself: how am I standing in the way of my own success? How am I keeping myself from my dreams?
The thing about life is that it can take us anywhere. You can spend your whole life working out and eating right and still die at thirty from cancer or some random act of violence in the streets. Those are the type of things that are out of our control. When we decide to take a trip, publish a novel, see the world, ask someone out-those things are not. Stop waiting for a sign or for your body to look nicer or for your situation to change. Stop creating invisible barriers and live your fucking life. Do it now.