There is a certain peace in bathrooms. Those little rooms, or big rooms with little stalls, are a haven.
The official diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder and major depression came about eight years ago. All my life, I’ve been scared. I’ve been scared to approach people, because who would want to talk to me? I’ve been afraid to leave the house dressed badly, because the masses might stone me. I’ve been afraid to talk, because what if I said the wrong thing? It is hard to sleep when the heart refuses to stop its palpitations, and when the brain refuses to stop going over and over that word with the boss that was probably very minor to her, but not to me. The brain never stops yelling: You did something wrong. Sometimes the stress of dealing with people, be they the politicians I covered, the cops I talked to at crime scenes, the people one meets in a normal day to day existence – became too much, and I would need a place to pull myself together. We are not a society that values privacy. Except in those little rooms.
I came home from work the other day and didn’t want to disturb my husband with my being upset; my bad day. So I went into the bathroom, laid down on the extra-long red bath rug, and stared up until I saw the ceiling of Grand Central Terminal — pale blue, with the constellations spread out above me in gold.
My favorite public bathrooms are the ones with the floor to ceiling heavy wood doors. Then you have a cubicle. Then you have a private room to pray or meditate or think, or whip out the little journal kept in a pocketbook and write out what’s happening.
Pull yourself together, I tell myself. I think of an athlete at a weight machine, trying to pull all those heavy grey blocks up to the center. Lift the weights and carry them in my center.
Another good thing about floor to ceiling stall doors is that no one can see you. You’re in there alone. You can put the seat down on that toilet and know no one will see and recognize your shoes. Invisible, at last!
So I lock myself in my chamber and think and write in the journal that’s always tucked in my purse and ask God for certain things. Like, why can’t I be hit by a bus, instead of that nice pregnant lady who got slammed and died the other day? The one everyone loved? If I stop my anti-seizure drugs, say, will I tremble enough to fall in front of a bus? Or a train? A subway train would really do the job well.
I need to go to the bathroom with my pocketbook and ask the spirits in that stall why life has to be difficult. I worry I’ve had my bit of happiness and it’s never coming back. I worry that at 37 I’ve got about forty years of life ahead of me. I don’t want to go through that. Some people see life as a fight. I see it as a marathon that never ends, where you’re running, running, running, running; uphill; sweating; face reddened; panting; no one standing along the street cheering you on and handing you little cups of water. No one cares.
Stop. That’s not true. That is defeatist thinking, or so I’ve been taught in eight years of therapy. I’m at a point where I can stop for a second, and ask my brain: Is this rational thinking? Most often, it is not. I’m amazed when I go out with people, and learn people actually like me. It is hard for me to hold that hand out to new people, and open that door. I’m getting better when it comes to dealing with people; standing up for myself; interacting in social situations. It’s thanks to therapy and yes, drugs.
I wonder if this could have been caught earlier, saving me three decades of pain. I spoke to my decidedly blue-collar father the last time he was hospitalized, and asked him, again, to please quit smoking. Having seen his agoraphobic ways, the ways his hands shook in the presence of new people, I chose to go for broke, and told him I understood if smoking helped relieve anxiety – that I was a card-carrying member of the anxiety club. Oh, he knows, he said. He said his mother was the same way. Then he said he was certain my problems had been intensified by my mother because “she was always so hard on you.” It made me wonder why a full-grown man, somewhat acquainted with the release of therapy as he was a longtime friend of Bill W., wouldn’t say anything.
Still. I remain a solitary person. Sometimes I go to the bathroom to reflect on these people I’m with. These Humans who eat and drink and smile and bask in the glow of each other’s comments. You look wonderful! Your hair looks fabulous! I love that ring! I feel like an alien among them, observing their ways, to take back to my tribe. Only I don’t have a tribe. I stand among their brilliant colors, a blackbird among the parrots and peacocks and birds of paradise; a house sparrow listening to their magnificent songs.
There’s a coffee shop on the Lower East Side, where the hipsters are encouraged to write on the bathroom walls, which are made out of blackboard. They write — spots of philosophy; messages of love; comments on sex and the human condition
I look at them, the way archeologists must have examined the walls of the tombs under the Great Pyramid.
