bathrooms

Hello, how are you doing?  Ming and I are on a journey, searching for home.  I’m thinking about my needs lately, the true truth.  Not what I think I should need, but what I actually, for reaslsies need to feel safe in my home.  A big part of that is bathrooms.

I was worried about sharing a bathroom among five people, in the Catholic Worker house we were supposed to move into.  A board member asked, “What bothers you about it?”

I explained that I menstruate every month, and it can get messy.  I need a bathroom where I can feel safe to do my thing, not thinking about others.

Privacy feels important.  Sure, I can use a public restroom if I need to, on a trip.  But that has an anonymity.  Feels different from sharing a bathroom with community members.

The board member said, “I completely understand,” and mentioned her time as a nun living with Sisters.  She explained how the man that Ming and I were supposed to live with right away had been married.  “He knows about that stuff…” she said.

sharing knowledge

Yes, of course he would know about menstruation.  I couldn’t explain to her–it’s not that I’m afraid of sharing knowledge with him about how uteruses work.  More that the space is not something I care to share with him.  I wouldn’t want him to see a misplaced drip of my menstrual fluids; worrying about that would stress me.  But more I just want all that to myself.

I’d rather not even share a bathroom with Ming.  I think often about a book I read about 25 years ago called In Praise of Shadows by 谷崎 潤一郎.  Maybe I should read that book again.  If I remember correctly, it was saying how a bathroom should be a dirty hole in the ground, to do a shadowy thing in.

Not that peeing, pooing, or menstrual fluiding is shameful in any way.  More like–not all places need to be the same, brightly lit and official-sanitized.  Let us do a dark thing in a dark place.

Kind of like that bitter on the Seder plate.  It could represent pain and suffering.  But what about–not everything is sweet.

Our taste can get blown out, like in a photo that’s overexposed or the light is wrong, and the bright parts lose all detail.  I like variety and nuance.

list

Well, here is a list–me trying to explain why I need bathroom privacy.  It’s a bit TMI.  Please look away, friends who do not enjoy explicit bathroom thoughts.

1. I prefer not to smell other people’s poop.
2. I prefer not to clean other peoples’ fluids off the seat before using it–as an experience.
3. Also I fear getting an illness from others’ fluids.
4. There can be an unfairness factor also, an emotional component to having to wipe up fluids others leave carelessly.
5. Well, I don’t want to deal with others’ bathroom fluids at all.
6. I don’t wanna worry about bothering other people with my own smells and fluids.
7. Sharing a bathroom hand towel–do I really trust other people to wash their hands properly?  If they don’t, they will leave germs on the hand towel.  Basically, I am not capable of that level of trust.  I have never as an adult person trusted another person enough that I will use a shared fabric bathroom hand towel.  I assume any hand towel is filthy and wipe my hands on my own clothes or nothing.
8. Flush lever and door handle, similar thing.  I assume they’re filthy.
9. Water left on the floor.
10. Toothpaste in the sink, hair, etc.
11. Bathroom sounds–I don’t wanna hear someone’s poop grunting.  Feels way too personal.
12. I’m really afraid of being in the bathroom doing something that takes a while like showering, when someone else needs the bathroom.  I don’t want someone to be tortured trying to keep in their fluids while I’m luxuriously soaping up or rinsing myself.  Or a timing thing, like if someone needs to leave the house to get to work or an appointment, and I’m messing up their process.  I can’t turn off worrying about that and tracking, “Ok, so and so needs to go to work, but I don’t think she’s taken a shower yet.  So I should wait to take my shower…”  The tracking takes up bandwidth, and delaying my own shower is not always the best for my well-being.
13. I need to feel safe to poop.  If I have a hint of worry that I’m hogging the bathroom, like someone else needs to get ready for work, my guts will just shut off.  That is bad for my health.  I need to keep things in motion.
14. I’m sketched out by others’ shower things like those plastic poofs for shower gel and any type of back brush.  They seem ever-dirty and not my business.  I’m judging them, but I don’t want to be judging them.  I don’t even want to look at them!  I don’t want them in my consciousness!
15. Also I’m overwhelmed by the smells of the products in bathrooms.  If a bathroom has 25 smells, wow.  I’m exhausted by that.

yes

I could go on–I will end my list there.  Thank you for your care to learn about my needs.

Are you this particular about bathrooms?  I think it’s an autism rigidity?  Maybe I lean OCD.  But I think I just can’t turn off my attention and thoughts like other people might be able to.

Others seem to use fabric hand towels with a nonchalance I envy.  Are you thinking about the hand washing skills of others?  Can you trust other people in a way I never could?

If so, praise God that life is easier for you in this way.  Disability is exhausting.  It’s a lot of work.

Ming is like this too.  We dream of a world where foot pedals for controlling sinks are more common, to avoid contaminated faucet handles.