Exhale – Daily Prompt

*sigh* It’s a bit embarrassing really, the way I have to start out with this Daily Prompt. It’s a bit graphic too, so if you’re a bit squeamish, I’d look away now.

I don’t know if I’m the only person in the world who has this problem, but it’s hardly likely there is any kind of club I can join to find others like me. It’s not a subject I openly discuss at dinner parties and it’s definitely not open for debate in the office either. Close family members know the issue exists but even we don’t talk about it when we’re having a cup of tea and a biscuit. So, here it is:

I can’t poo in public.

Ok, let’s rephrase that as I doubt many people could poo in public, indeed they’d get arrested for dropping their drawers and pinching a loaf in the middle of the high street. What I mean to say is:

I can only plop in my own toilet.

Let me clarify this further for you.

To do one’s pieces, I need to be in either:

a) my own bathroom, in my en-suite, in my own home
b) my own bathroom, in my en-suite, in my hotel room
c) my own bathroom, in my en-suite, at my mum’s house
d) the bathroom at my dad’s house when everyone is out

All other options, the bets are off and the rusty ring stays clamped shut. I simply do not have control over when it opens. So, needless to say that I have to be in the right place to ‘go’, yeah? Generally, I have to be at home? No curling one out when I’m at work for me! No dropping a bomb on a plane (a poo bomb…not an actual bomb, though I think both are wrong, no one should crap on a flight regardless of how long it is – it’s like dropping litter, it’s not big and it’s not clever…take it home with you!!). Nope, if I’m not in the right place, I don’t even get the signals to go. Sometimes I do get the signals to go, but my ring piece still stays shut! I know, crazy huh! Bound to be a psychological thing, I know, but there we are. However, my body does seem to have a mind all of it’s own and likes to play nasty, wicked jokes on me.

Let’s rewind to a few weeks ago.

One sunny (funny that, in the Middle East) morning, my husband and I wake up, as usual, at the crack of a sparrows fart. 5.30am has arrived all to quickly and it’s time to get the children up and dressed for school again, just like we did the day before. OH NO! Scratch that! I did it the day before, of course I did, silly me. Anyway, we both got up, thoroughly annoyed from the argument we’d had the night before.

I’m not a believer in having to kiss and make up every time before you roll over and go to sleep. I am a believer that sleeping on it can help you to calm down and help you wake up with a fresh mind. I am also a believer in making my husband sweat it the hell out when he has done something wrong and boy, had he made me angry the night before. So angry in fact that I wasn’t ready to speak to him when we woke up.

We didn’t speak on the way to drop the kids to school, we didn’t speak on the way back from dropping the kids to school. We didn’t speak at home, we didn’t speak as I got ready for work. It was his day off. We didn’t speak as I made my measly lettuce wrap for lunch (I can’t eat when I’m stressed…I lose weight quickly and look like a haggard old witch) and I slammed my work things into my bag, picked up the car keys and without saying a word to each other, I left for work, shutting my fingers in the door on the way out. Shit. Bet he bloody laughed at that – didn’t hang around to find out.

So, I drove to work in the crappy traffic, bumper to bumper, horns blaring, sitting at traffic lights for 5 minutes at a time, waiting of the toots of impatient drivers as soon as the lights turned green. When I arrived at work I then had the mission of trying to find a parking space which is almost impossible – 30 minutes later, I found one, which meant I was actually on time for work. With a stressful start, I spent a wonderful rest of the day in the office, trying to come up with lots of lovely, creative things to write. We all know what happens to creativity when we are stressed now, don’t we?! We either spew ten tonne of relevant material out of our brains, onto paper (or PCs/laptops, whichever medium is being used) and everything flows beautifully, or, OR, sod all happens and we get Writer’s Block. Guess what happened to me. Guess who had a bloody deadline and a blank sheet of paper in front of her. That’s right, ME! I don’t know how many words there are in the English language, but I couldn’t come up with a single one. Eventually I downed tools and got up to make myself a coffee. Decaf…caffeinated makes me bounce off the walls.

We share our office kitchen with a whole group of other office users in the building we are in, which means there are some dirty sods around. Cups are left laying around, teaspoons go missing etc, so we tend to take our own tea and coffee to work and keep it in a cupboard in our office. I’m relatively new to the team and whilst I’ve bought in my own coffee, I keep forgetting to bring in a mug, so have to use one from the kitchen. Well, on this day, all the mugs were…gone. So began the mug hunt. I searched everywhere for a mug; cupboards;our office; meeting rooms; other people’s offices; in the end I had to ask the tea boys where they’d put the mugs…turns out they’d taken them to give them a good clean and hadn’t told anyone. ‘Nice!’ I thought, at least the mugs will be clean. Wrong! They were just as bad as they were when they left. Still, I didn’t care – I had a mug! I made my coffee and went back to the office.

Now, have you ever sat down to have a warm drink and started to feel, hmmmm, what shall we call it? Rumblings! That’s it! Have you ever sat down to have a warm drink and started to feel rumblings in your tummy that signal to you that at some point in the very, very near future you might need to have a poo? Yes? Well, at about 11.30am on that very day, that. was. me.

Oh.

Shit.

Literally.

I have already explained that I can’t do do-dos in any loos aside from the ones listed above. There was no point in me even trying, but I knew that the warmth of the coffee had unleashed a potential movement and now alongside trying to dislodge the Writer’s Block I was experiencing, I was having to concentrate on not letting even the smallest of farts escape into the sponge of my chair. I had 5 hours before I could leave work, plus at least an hours drive home before I could get to a toilet and it was going to be pure agony!

Time passed soooooo slooowly. Every time I moved in my chair I was reminded of how dire my situations was getting, so I tried to sit as still as I possibly could. I’m sure people started to notice. Being a creative writer at work means I can write what I like about the given subject at hand, but found my mind kept wandering – it was great that the Writer’s Block had lifted but now all I wanted to write about was shit, farts and toilets. Finally, 5pm arrived, which was a good job really because I really was about to shit myself. You know it’s getting bad when your tummy really starts to hurt and you have to dig your toes into the floor!

But then I got to my car.

We have a huge 4.6litre V8 4×4 car that weighs approx. 2 tonnes and as I walked up to it, on tiptoes (I’d reached situation critical at this point) I noticed I’d got a flat tyre.

Have you ever seen someone do that kinda weird looking around ‘whaddo I do now? I’m going to raise my hands in the air at people because I don’t know what else to do’ turning round in circles and drop their hands to their sides slump their shoulders then just get on with it, thing? Yeah, that was me.

I changed that damn tyre, on that damn heavy car while desperate for a damn shit. But I did it and finally got on the road. The only saving grace was the traffic was a little clearer by the time I’d finished…an hour later.

I raced home eager to make it back to the bathroom in time. All I could think about was my bathroom, my lovely bathroom! I put the music on in the car, loud, to try and distract myself from the gurgles in my tummy and the lyrics of the song playing turned my thoughts back to the argument from the night before and began to turn my mood sour again. Eventually, I made it home, haphazardly parked the car outside the villa, burst through the door and threw my bag down on the floor. My husband, seeing this, clearly thought I was still in a very bad mood with him and just scowled at me, which wound me up even more. I ran upstairs to the bathroom, just in the nick of time.

Oh, the relief!

ALLELUIA ALLELUIA!!

I sang to the heavens I was so pleased to be sat on the porcelain bowl, my porcelain bowl…and then I realised there was no toilet roll. I could have cried.

I looked around the bathroom to see if there were any random rolls laying around, but nothing. None. None to be seen. Then I spotted something laying in the corner of the bathroom…my husband’s work shirt.

I knew then I was going to be ok.

Exhale.

*smile*

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/10/07/daily-prompt-safety/