What happens in the bathroom.
There’s just something about bar bathrooms.
Witness to gossip, scandal, new drunken friendships, pampering, and many a unique rear end, I find the bathroom at bars to be especially suited for crying.
Which is where I found myself, yet again.
It was empty when I first walked in, and empty still when I shut the stall door and slid dramatically to the floor in tears.
You know that feeling when you take one too many shots of tequila and dance the night away? The one that comes after you finally get into bed and you feel yourself sinking, falling, concaving into yourself? And the only thing that’ll make it better is to throw it all up?
Well, that’s kind of how I felt.
Except instead of tequila, it was emotions, and instead of throwing up to feel better, I cried.
So here I am, crying on the floor of the bathroom at the bar.
I had just been with my friends. We had been talking about *surprise surprise* boys, and of course what happened a few months ago came up.
Feeling wiser and little more comfortable sharing that rather emotional rough patch without breaking down into tears, I updated them on what had transpired, not realizing that though time had passed and I had made progress on healing, accepting, and forgiving myself for what I went through, it was still an open wound.
And reliving it all… well, it brought up some tender feelings.
Guess it still hurts.
Which is natural, completely normal.
I mean goodness gracious it’s only been a few months. Of course it’s alright to still feel vulnerable and raw.
Knowing that I needed to cry and sit with what had surfaced (which included all the discomfort and pain), I politely excused myself to the ladies room and when the stall door was shut, I let it all rise to the top.
At first, some thoughts came forth that did not serve me.
They were wicked and devilish and teased me for hiding in the bathroom.
Big girls don’t cry. Get over it Elan.
Wow, way to share all your deepest darkest stories. No wonder you feel exposed.
(I think the correct word to use here is “vulnerable”)
Others were more vindictive.
Now everyone’s gonna know something’s wrong. You’ve been here over ten minutes. What, you can’t sit through a conversation without breaking down?
The thing about these thoughts though?
They’re just thoughts. They come, and then they go.
So while I’m sitting there with all the aching memories of time past, I also have to face all the self-judgment and shame from hiding in the bathroom.
Again though, I’m not hiding. I’m healing.
I’m taking responsibility for my emotions and I’m handling them in privacy. And where once I would’ve let these vicious critical thoughts further consume me, I now simply acknowledge and let them go.
There’s a lot of cultural dialogue about doing everything to avoid sitting with these kinds of feelings: hurt, sadness, pain. There’s this stigma that if you aren’t happy all the time, something’s wrong.
But as author Glennon Doyle so smartly points out in her book Untamed, “Use pain to become. To be alive is to be in a perpetual state of revolution. Pain is not tragic, it’s magic. Don’t avoid it. You need it to evolve, to become.”
And I’m certainly becoming.
So, I cried. And it felt good, as good as throwing up tequila from a night of dancing.
And when I was finished, and a gaggle of girls had now entered the bathroom to lament about the “lack of guys in this town”, I wiped my tears away, and timidly opened the door.
On my way out, one of the tipsy girls looked back at me and gawked.
“Oh my gosh you’re soooooo beautiful.”
Face no doubt red from crying and eyelashes damp from the tears, I smiled gratefully at her and said thank you.
As uncomfortable as vulnerability may be, it apparently wears well.
