WHY ARE YOU PISSED OFF?
Warning: Actual urine ahead. Urinetown, population: me
The night I got nominated for an Oscar®, I didn’t get to celebrate. (Understatement.) Instead, I spent the evening crouched over the drain of a hotel bathtub, passing blood and urine intermittently as I wept in pain. I was riding out the worst UTI of a UTI-riddled life. A few hours before, I’d white-knuckled my way through an appearance on David Letterman’s couch. It was my second time on the show, and it ought to have been a triumphant return. The first time, I’d worn an outfit I’d bought at the Hot Topic at Ridgedale Mall in Minnesota; this time, I wore a silk charmeuse Dolce & Gabbana dress that had been delivered to my hotel by the stylist I shared with Jessica Simpson. (It’s ironic how you know you’ve made it when you no longer own the clothing on your body.) Like I said, this should have a victory lap, a champagne float, the perfect can you believe it New York moment. But I was in way too much pain to be the toast of the town. I was just regular toast.
As I mentioned above, I’ve had a lot of UTIs, though none quite as savage as this one. In college I frequently wound up at Planned Parenthood (thank you, Planned Parenthood!) picking up yet another round of trimethoprim. It was never just “burning pee”; it was agony, like a thorn in my urethra. Around that time, I picked up the book Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom by Dr. Christiane Northrup. I don’t agree with all of Dr. Northrup’s opinions (especially not in recent years), but it was 1997 B.G. (Before Goop) and I was struck by her observations about how women manifest emotional trauma in their bodies. In the book, Dr. Northrup wrote about how she’d observed that her patients with recurrent UTIs seemed to have a lot of anger— they were “literally pissed off.” This gave me pause. I did. And I was.
I was pissed off at 19, and I was pissed off a decade later as I crouched in the tub and cried when I should have been at a rooftop bar enjoying my fifteen minutes. What could I have possibly been angry about, you ask? Shouldn’t I have been overjoyed? I should have, you’re right about that. But my moment had already been stolen from me by misogyny. By the (still) shocking amount of people who felt I wasn’t worthy of prestige because I was a woman who had done sex work and wasn’t embarrassed about it, because I was outspoken and weird, because I didn’t look or act like the grateful, giggling sample-size ingenues they were used to seeing on talk show couches. “Her parents must be so ashamed,” a Gawker commenter had typed earlier that day, after I’d been nominated for an Oscar.
That’s how you wind up “literally pissed off” when you should be elated.
Why am I bringing this up now, Jenny? Because recently I suddenly began having issues with my bladder again after many symptom-free years. This time, it manifested as urgency, peeing up to 30 times a day and sleeping in a sexy black diaper out of pure paranoia. I started declining invitations to dinners and movies, because I knew I’d have to take an embarrassing amount of bathroom breaks. I took pumpkin oil supplements, quit coffee (NEVER AGAIN), sparkling water, acidic food, nightshades, etc. And then, while reading this book by Dr. John Sarno (warning: woo) I wondered if I was just angry. Again. Still.
As an experiment, I began reciting the following, aloud, multiple times a day: “My bladder function is normal. The urgency is caused by deep-seated rage.”
I felt silly, but I kept saying it. Within days, the problem I’d been dealing with for months was completely gone. I’m fucking serious! All I had to do was claim the anger. Go ahead, call me Gwyneth; I’m just thrilled that I can drink coffee again.
And now that I’ve acknowledged that anger, validated her— yes, my anger is a “she”— I need to understand why she’s still crouched over a drain all these years later. The interrogation begins, and hopefully, more healing.
P.S. Also on the subject of women’s health, please check out the majestic Rebecca Woolf’s amazing account of her LEEP procedure; I love you, Bec!