CoDA Files: First Installment

I, like many people, am codependent.  I think it's important to my recovery to write about, discuss, and share some of my issues, but the disease (it's considered a disease) can be difficult to explain.  So, instead of defining this complex term, I'll be illustrating it in installments.  This inaugural CoDA post will serve as a small snapshot of how codependency (and my recovery) operates in my life with regards to triumphs and failures, and this edition will specifically emphasize how it works in relation to my bathroom behavior.  (We'll get there...)

My triumphs in my recovery from codependency are often invisible to others.  For instance, a couple weekends ago at a 12-step meeting for codependents, I unzipped my hoodie while someone was speaking.  Then, last week, I didn't apologize when a stranger bumped into me on the street.  And yesterday, I asked the woman next to me on the plane to move so I could go to the bathroom.

My failures may be more apparent but are still nearly imperceptible.  Recently I told my sister to shut up when I could no longer stand her ridiculing me under her breath.  The other day, I gave a friend unsolicited advice.  And earlier today I forgot about putting my faith in a higher power and went on a future-trip that left my stomach in needless knots.

Though it may not seem like it, I have done a lot of recovery work in the past eight years.  And here's where my bathroom habits come in.  (But please don't misunderstand; my codependency, and codependency in general, covers a lot more ground than a tiled room ever could.)  When I was five years old, I used to pee right before school and then hold my bladder all day until I got home.  I remember my painful, heavy, desperate canter up the long slope of my street in California after our bus driver had deposited me on the corner, how I silently pleaded with my body to hold on, to wait--almost there!  I remember one particular day, ripping open the front door, dropping my backpack, and pushing frantically into the bathroom to turn my back on the toilet and undo the button on my jeans only to have my bladder betray me even as the backs of my knees brushed the porcelain bowl, the hot culminating rush of that day's water fountain sips and lunch milk gulps saturating the crotch and backside of my underwear and pants.

I wish I could say the experience taught me to use the bathrooms at school, but I only resolved to do better at maintaining control.  And I did do "better," for years, perhaps achieving my "best" when I was in 8th or 9th grade.  At that time, I went on a long trip to the beach with my friend and her family.  I had spent a lot of time with this friend and had been to her house a number of times and felt a lot of affection for her family.  I also had a secret (to her and I believe at that time also to myself) crush on her, which did not help matters.  In any case, her family fed me delicious meat and potato kinds of meals all week, during which time I refused to defecate.

Yes, I was in pain.  My guts gurgled and cramped, and I did what I could to eliminate gas when I was swimming alone or walking by myself, but I never allowed myself to poop.  I was mortified at the thought of stinking up the bathroom or worse, clogging the toilet.  There were a few instances where I thought I might be able to get away with it after entering an already stinky bathroom, but my nerves coupled with my very real constipation prevented it.

The trip, if you must know, lasted nine days.

The moment I got home, I headed for the bathroom, where, as you might imagine (though I don't encourage it), I was trapped for hours.  I'll spare you the details, but I will tell you that at the start, it was like trying to pass a baseball and that later on, it was like a baseball diamond after a week of rain.

I didn't regularly use bathrooms outside of my house until I was in high school and had come out of the closet to myself (and not long afterwards, to others).  It took accepting a part of myself I didn't think anyone could love for me to be able to forgive myself for being human at the most base levels.  Because that's what it was about; I didn't think I should pee in public because somehow I'd gotten it into my head that expression of my body's basic needs was shameful or unwarranted--that fulfilling needs like these was something only other people had a right to do.  In some way, for some reason, I didn't believe I had as much right to this life as other people did.

I would be lying if I said my bathroom habits have completely reformed.  The truth is, though I would never now force myself into a state of prolonged constipation, I am still a poop ninja.  (That's what one ex laughingly called me when she realized she never detected my movements...)  I try not to go in that way at other people's houses, and I'm so nervous about it when it does happen that I'll often try to cover up the fact that I'm covering up, for instance spraying the provided scented spray only as I'm flushing the toilet--in order to cover the confessional gush of the can.  When I know I'm going to be caught, I usually advertise it in order to diminish its power.  I'll joke it up to make it seem like it's not a big deal, covering my embarrassment with false confidence.  "I would NOT go in there if I were you," I might say with a wry smile before pressing forward.  "Give it a few hours...or days.  You might want to use the neighbor's house, actually."  I'm joking with whoever I'm talking to, but as they say, there's always a little (or a lot) of truth to every joke.

So each time I let loose in a public bathroom because that's what my body tells me I need to do, I remind myself that I'm not a loser, but a winner, that I am creating a codependent victory.   Yes, a victory that a three-year-old could boast about, but still, I won't let some potty-training tot steal my thunder...or my stall.

I guess what I'm trying to say is the next time a friend tells you she is codependent, you might pat her on the back as she exits your bathroom.  Even if her issues aren't the same as mine, she might enjoy a good pat because, you know, who doesn't?