Posted by Darren on January 05, 2000 at 12:04
In Reply to: My Big Fear posted by Darren on January 04, 2000 at 10:40
Thank you so much to those who posted considerate responses - it's so good to be able to think that others understand how I feel. I've come home from another day which in all honesty wasn't too bad. I didn't actually need to pee too often and when I did nobody seemed to notice too much - maybe I just felt a sense of relief having got it 'off my chest' yesterday!
Wetfan's suggestion of imagining the alternative to visiting the toilet - and wetting myself - was shudderingly awful, but very thought-provoking - many thanks!
I'm really going to give a good try to shaking myself out of this although I know it's not going to be easy. To give you a brief background, I've always had this reluctance to talk about toilet matters and express my need 'to go', even from when I was little. My family never mentioned bathroom matters and this made it worse.
I mentioned in my first post something that happened to me when I was sixteen years old and I suppose I've never really recovered from it. I went on a school trip to see a Shakespeare play (for english studies) and as usual I didn't use the toilet after the performance, because very few others did! However, I gave my own performance on the coach going home! I was dying for a pee and yet I sat in silence desperately holding on. I felt in terrible discomfort and I had a severe pain in my belly but I never dreamt that I'd lose control of myself.
This was the worst aspect of it. I was almost numbed with the agony of being bursting and all of a sudden, I just felt my pants and trousers becoming warm and I was peeing myself. It was a terrible sensation and it ran all down my legs and over the coach floor. Someone saw and yelled out to everyone else and immediately I was the stunned centre of attention. What really scared me though was that it just happened without appearing to get worse. One minute I was holding on, the next I was urinating in my pants!
The next few months were just a nightmare - my parents and family were horrified, my fellow students just took the mickey intolerably and my friends found out and joined in the ribbing. I sat my GCSE's shortly afterwards and suffered agonies during the exams, fearing it would happen again, especially as I got nervous and needed to pee more! I even left the exam room on one occasion, saying that I felt ill and sacrificing two years work just so that I could go to the toilet - in case I lost control again.
My current girlfriend knows about my accident and chides me about on odd occasions. Ever since that time, my 'fear' of it happening has got worse and worse.
However, as I said, I'm going to try and sort myself out and I'm so grateful to those of you who offered kind words.