Once Upon A Time I Peed In A Pool In The Hamptons
MICHAEL SEALEY'S VIDEOS HAVE SAVED A LOT OF SANITY.
I don't recall exactly how I decided Michael Sealey's voice is the voice I trust to guide me to a meditative state. I like The Honest Guys as well. I trust these fellows to not be embedding weird commands into their work.
Maybe it is their British accents.
Mister Sealey has a knack for rooting out your most basic insecurities. He works on you while you sleep, yo. At some point, I might undertake a "Trance Weekend" and just listen to all his meditations back-to-back. See how I turn out. Until then, I want to share with you this particular video, which deals with social anxiety.
The truly helpful part comes when he asks your unconscious mind to recall the very first time you were embarrassed in public.
It comes with a disclaimer for those of us with particularly harrowing memories.
I don't think about it much, but my seminal, life-altering bout with social anxiety is seared into my memory: I peed in a pool in Westhampton. Not Westhampton Beach, West-frickin-hampton. I was sooo little. Could not been more than three or four. I recall telling my mom I had to pee. "You'll go when you get there," she chirped. To this day, I do not see why a few extra minutes could not have been spared. When I got there, it was a mansion. Not a little ATL-style McMansion, either--I think we were on Dune Road. As I say, I was little. I recall a massive foyer with a black-and-white marble parquet floor. Museum-grade statuary and giant gold urns frothing with live flowers and plants. I was too speechless to ask to pee. My mom had already put me in a swimsuit, so changing wasn't going to avail me to a toilet. I pulled the bottom of her flowered sarong, "Mommy," I pleaded. She waved me off. The white couple we were visiting greeted mom effusively. "Lucile! So good to see you. Welcome." We were the only black ones there. "I have to peeeeeeee," I wailed to my sissy Patrina. "Shut up," she replied helpfully. She was just as dazed and confused as I, and also only about eight years old. I looked at the pool full of white kids playing Marco Polo. I wasn't sure what was going to happen when they put me into the water. I was about to pop.
The lady asked me, "Don't you want to get in the pool?" I was going to tell her that I needed to pee first, but I felt so shy. My mom swooped in and put me into the pool. "She loves the water!" Mom sang. She must have been nervous too, because I'd never heard that frilly, feminine tone from her. She was more a black Bette Davis type speaker, far more likely to make some dry comment that'd piss you off three days later, once you realized you'd been dissed and dismissed. I just stood there, helpless. As soon as the water crossed my hips, I was in trouble. My mom had already turned away with her cocktail. "I gotta peee," I wailed. "NOT IN THE POOL," commanded a sandy blonde white kid of about fourteen. He looked at me. His face was first solicitous, then shocked. If he'd known me, he might have lifted me out of the pool and let me finish peeing in the grass. I would not have cared!
"Shit," he barked with disgust, "It's too late." The pool cleared. I peed, and peed, and peed. I truly must have urinated for about two minutes. At some point, I began to cry.
"This is really gonna cost me," sighed the husband. I was staring at them as I filled their clear, pellucid pool with bright yellow urine. The wife was looking at her husband, but when he was resigned rather than enraged, she began to stare at my mom as the pieces fell into place for her. We had been there maybe twenty minutes. There was no need to stay.
"Way to end a pool party," was all she said. I don't recall anything after that. I literally shut down and did not see or hear anything else, including how I got from the pool. I don't remember the next few days, actually.
Every time I came to my senses, I swooned with humiliation again.
Nobody tried to help me. My sister berated me every time she looked at me for weeks, and no one stopped her. Instead, my mom ignored me and made Trina take care of me. I heard her on the phone telling anyone and everyone how I had ruined her with the white people in the Hamptons. Only our neighbor, Mrs. Shirley Fields, called my mom to account. She taught Head Start with our mother. Mrs. Fields had helped my mom get the rented house we lived in on Oakland Drive. She had a Master's Degree in Early Childhood Education from like, LIU/C.W. Post, and after the third or fourth regaling of all and sundry regarding mom's social tragedy, she came to the house (from directly next door), stood in the middle of the living room floor and stated:
"Lucile, you are the adult here. I know Nina well enough to understand that you knew she had to pee when you put her in them whitefolks' pool!" And she turned around and left without another word.
My mom let up with the talking, but she continued to ignore me. I was never comforted; never told it wasn't my fault. I was humiliated and confused. Humiliation was a new emotion for me, and I had no way to process it, and no one to help me. I'm always a little afraid because of it. Always.
I know this fear has held me back in a myriad of ways, some too subtle to articulate. I want it to stop.
Do you recall how you came to be socially anxious? I can be the life of the party, but that little girl helplessly peeing in the classiest pool in the Hamptons is always there with me too. Always. I need to know how to heal her.
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