I couldn't pee in the lake. I'm a proper lady, and I always do what is expected of me. As I willed myself to to be improper I wondered whether I've been so conditioned to be one way my whole life that I could never be another way. Have I been lobotomized by all the outside forces in my life, namely, my upbringing and the expectations that came with being a daughter and a sister, a friend, a woman, a wife, a mother? Or did expectation become the name for never having a mind of my own? At some point I had stopped asking questions, or maybe I never had, and just did what I was told. I lost a voice I never really had. Do we as women do that regularly? Drown out the voices we value more than our own. Since age thirty I've tried desperately to break free of this and to listen to what I want. So why couldn't I tinkle without fear when I had to?
There I was, Four hundred and twenty three stair steps from the nearest port-a-potty and I had billions of gallons of Lake Michigan water in which to relieve myself. But I couldn't. My friend, Jas, walked into the shallows, cooled off, took a whiz, and went back to our beach blanket to sun herself like a lizard. "Don't think about it," she said over her shoulder. I, however, remained in the water. Thinking about it. I was trying to conjure up the willpower to do something that felt inherently wrong. I stared at the white, flabby bodies on the sand and tried to wait for no one to be in the water. Then I tried focusing on the horizon line with the little toy boats dancing in the distance, which occasionally took off, leaving me bobbing in their wakes making it even more difficult to concentrate on the task at hand. I thought that maybe if I could just remove the idea that people could see me I could urinate in water up to my shoulders, and maybe, just maybe, no one would know. But I was convinced they would know, and that they did know. "Just let go," I repeated over and over in my head. The Korean family who were leaping into the "dirty" cold water and screeching with delight at withstanding the Michigan waters were becoming a growing concern. But even more disconcerting was the frosted blonde lady, the type who spends every summer soaking up every bit of rays as though this year may her last to ever see the sun. Living in a frozen tundra for four months does things like that to the Dutch community. With skin like beef jerky and enough hair product to make her two-inch long hair on the back of her razor haircut stay perfectly spiked against all elements she occasionally glanced in my direction and giggled to her friend which played tricks on my mind telling me she knew. She knew I was about to empty my bladder in the sight of God, the boats, the fish, and everyone. This would be to go against everything my mother thought proper.
How could I not do this thing that came so easily, as if by accident, when I was in first grade and the teacher refused to let me use the restroom during story time, or the day my mom sent me to school in a one-piece pantsuit that buttoned at the shoulder with tiny half sphere buttons that my less-than-deft hands could never maneuver at seven years of age? Because for the rest of my life from that point forward I learned to hold it. No matter what. Hold. It. In. Hold in your real thoughts. Don't make your own choices. Don't speak up when you need something. Don't reveal your true feelings. And don't, by any means, have any opinion at which you have arrived of your own volition. So, for twenty minutes I battled with my own brain and body to make pee-pee to avoid the impossible climb up the sandy Mount Everest. But twenty-five years of conditioning won out. I came out of the water dripping, walking the walk of shame because I couldn't do one simple thing; put the silent "P" in "swimming".
For decades (now) I have been told what I ought to be doing. What I ought not to be doing. And I've been a good listener. I've always been a rule follower, the good girl, until one day I met a man, fell in love, and told everyone to go screw themselves when it came to their opinions about my choice. I was supposed to marry a respectable doctor or minister, someone who kissed the ground my mother walked on and licked my dad's boots. Someone successful and a good "spiritual" leader. It must have been temporary insanity or the fact that I was about to turn thirty and had never made one choice by myself and for myself, because I married the artist who didn't care what anyone thought. But old habits die hard. Just as soon as I was married I was waiting for someone to be telling me what to do and where to go and how to be. But that person wasn't there. My husband was. The man with the "no expectations" philosophy I so fell in love with. But is there a balance somewhere? There is a role for everyone and an expectation that comes with every role. In many ways the world does have expectations of what a woman ought to be. I'm a wife and a step mom of two middle school kids. What that looks like exactly may not be able to be formulated or dictated or enforced. It may just be something I have to figure out along the way. By myself. For myself.
In the meantime I'm also just me. The girl who loves horses, likes being alone, enjoys reading, wants order and function, needs planning ahead and stability, but is also filled with wanderlust, and secretly craves spontaneous adventure and throwing caution to the wind. I know what I like and what I need - I don't know quite how to get it without guilt feelings. It's not selfless to want alone time when kids are in the house. The loft is never organized with running a business from home, kids, pets, no storage or closets, and no washer or dryer in our building. My voice, whether I hold it in or not, is still really quite drowned out by the noise of life. How does a woman stay herself and be what everyone else needs at the same time? It's like wanting so badly to do something that is physically outside the realm of possibility, like trying to pee in the lake when I've been told, for so long, not to. I might not have been able to put the silent "P" in "swimming" while I bobbed up and down in that sparkly water. But I could put both "P's" in epiphany: I decided I need to redefine what my expectations are for myself before I get a bladder infection out of irrational fear and a sense of duty.
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