Sometimes I sit on public toilets with all my clothes on. I cry. I sleep. I read. I think. I pray.Over the years, I have had some very memorable personal moments in public bathroom stalls.
- When I was an accounting intern and desperate to escape the monotony of editing the annual report, I would sit on the john, put my head on my knees, and take 10-minute power naps.
- The first time I visited a boyfriend's family, I started to have a silent emotional freak-out at a Chinese restaurant with everyone there. So I excused myself, found the commode, and engaged in some urgent positive self-talk.
- The day after a close friend told me about his struggle with a decade-long addiction, I instantaneously burst into tears at my desk at work, so I made a quick escape to the nearest toilet.
- When I went to London to visit my friend Jane, I arrived at the train station about an hour before our scheduled meeting. It was too cold to wait outside, so I located the "water closet," sat with my hiking backpack between my knees, put my head on it, and slept. I awoke to the sound of Jane hesitantly calling out my name in the echoey bathroom.
- Once I snuck away from my desk and into a toilet stall with a book under my arm because I was dying to see what was about to happen in Brooke Shield's memoir Down Came The Rain. (I fully acknowledge that not everyone will find postpartum depression as suspenseful as I do.)
The toilet stall has become like a transportable temple: it's the only place in public where I can be alone, meditate, re-focus and find a little comfort.
There are, however, some hazards to this sanctuary.
One is the automatic flusher. All that rushing and splashing directly beneath your pants can be a rude wake-up call. It is also important to maintain your cover - which requires that you flush upon exiting regardless of how painful it is to watch all that clean water go to waste.* Then you have to wash your clean hands. The hand washing, however, provides an opportunity to look in the mirror and clean up the mascara that has probably smeared during the crying, sleeping or thinking process.
Finally, I recommend the handicap stall whenever possible - the better lighting and larger space make it that much more inviting as a refuge.
*(It wasn't until college that I realized that the flusher bar on the toilet is meant to be hit with your foot, not your hand. It grosses me out to think how many times I touched a lever that had probably just been kicked by a shoe.)
