Unclogging My Life
How a broken toilet helped mend a broken heart
Things have been quiet here on the It’s My Room substack. For this I apologise, especially to those who have been kind enough to sign up for a paid subscription. The short story is that life has thrown me one of its bigger curveballs, and pushing through the numbness to write has, despite my best efforts, not been possible. But that’s changed now.
Gradually then suddenly, in the last months I’ve found myself in the midst of marital collapse. I’m not going to go into any detail, partly because that would be extremely invasive and also because I’ve been confiding and retelling the gory highlights to so many (indescribably amazing and supportive) friends, I’m bored of hearing myself talking about it.
As I write this, I am doing well, very well. I don’t mean I jump out of bed every morning with good morning zeal a la Stan Smith in the opening credits of American Dad. But compared to where I was only a fortnight or so, a phoenix has poked its beak defiantly out of the ashes.
And this unexpected surge of strength and newfound - dare I say it - excitement for the independent future that lies ahead is in large part down to…a dysfunctional toilet.
In the aftermath of a terrible but thankfully short-lived period of self-isolation, where I came to believe things about myself I wouldn’t project onto my most hated enemy, I came close to taking the path of least resistance. The shred of strength left inside me won, however, and instead I went to my parent’s home to let myself be cared for. When I returned, I began to open up properly to friends, despite deeply irrational fears they would look down on me. Quite the opposite. To say I’ve been bowled over by their reassurance, loyalty and care is an understatement.
While I became stable though, there were still daily spells of bewilderment and grief. I still felt pangs of guilt when I found myself enjoying life and more than once questioned what exactly it was that moved me to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Swimming. Cooking. Reading the new Robert Galbraith novel. Listening to a podcast about the rise of the woke right. Rewatching Frasier. It was a matter of going through the motions in a state of derealisation and defamiliarisation. Since the axe was officially felled on my relationship, the best way I can describe it was feeling that I had tripped and fallen into a parallel universe. It’s not even that this new universe was worse or didn't have some positives going for it, I was just desperate to locate the rip in reality’s fabric, to have the choice to go back to what I believed was my true life. As a wife.
When it rains it pours. I woke up two days before my 32nd birthday to find waste that was not mine in my toilet, caused by - as I’d eventually find out - a plant that had chosen the worst, arguably most unpleasant place to grow (the inside of the tenement drain pipe) and blocking off anything from my or my next-door neighbour’s water closet going downwards. I’ve never really gotten over that classic childhood phobia of the toilet overflowing, to the point it’s one of my most frequent recurring nightmares, (along with scalding hot, overflowing baths for some reason). As I tried every trick in the book to dislodge what I’d assumed was an erodible clog - from chucking down dishwashing liquid, baking powder and vinegar then forking out £25 for a fancy new plunger I could barely afford, the stubbornly rising water gave me a little shudder of horror.
On my 32nd birthday, while round at a friend’s flat eating a takeaway amongst chums and spilling out my plumbing woes, one of them joked it must have felt symbolic. A literal shit situation. I nodded and smiled but inwardly felt secretly pleased that the thought had not even occurred to me. Which was odd considering I’m a writer and it wasn’t exactly a subtle metaphor to reach for. No, I hadn’t wasted a moment cursing God or fate or sitting with my head in my hands asking why now my toilet had forsaken me. Instead, I’d launched straight into action.
On the Saturday two days earlier, after my sixth or seventh attempt with unsuccessful home remedies, I spent several hours traipsing from B&Q to Screwfix to my local hardware in search of a toilet-friendly drain snake. Absolutely nobody stocked such a thing. Given clogged toilets are hardly uncommon, I concluded the DIY retail sector is in cahoots with the pipe-educated bourgeoisie invested in keeping the naive proletariat from being able to fix their own bogs (wake up sheeple).
This was frustrating but I did not lose heart. Truth be told, it had been weirdly fun going into distinctly masculine-vibed stores as an independent woman who henceforth would be hanging her own pictures, painting her own kitchen cupboards and - should I ever have one - mowing the grass of her own garden. Some people have Ikea or Costa days out. If B&Q installed a cafe, I’d be tempted to make it a monthly event.
By then it was lateish evening and the only eatery around that area was KFC. I enjoyed a cheap and very cheerful dinner of hyper-processed reheated fried chicken. I even ordered the limited edition dirty fries because, bugger it, if you’re already way over your calorie budget, you might as well sample the special sauces.
When I returned home for another round of trying to get the damn, still unknown, blockage to shift, a neighbour came up and said dirty water was trickling down the building and seeping into their bathroom. After trying to help me with plunging and a lot of swearing from both of us, I accepted it was time to surrender to Big Plumbing and get a professional in.
When the obnoxious plant growing in the pipe was identified, plant roots being one of the more extremely fucking expensive complex blockages a plumber has to deal with, everyone in my building realised that if their waste pipes weren’t already affected, they soon would be. The bill was split communally which given how hefty it was, was a godsend. I found a new appreciation for what decent neighbours I had. I didn't even have to ask or make the case for splitting the bill. There are other tenants who wouldn't have been so generous.
Plus, it gave me a boost, taking almost sole responsibility for the issue, for chasing up the business, for mastering a perfect balance of reasonable and steely in my customer phone voice (“I appreciate you’re waiting for the scaffolders to get back with a quote but myself and my neighbours really aren’t willing or able to wait much longer.”). I enjoyed being the line of communication between us and the service, of feeling trusted to relay information accurately and honestly, of being appreciated by them for taking control.
Anyone who has read It’s My Room or any of my articles will know I am one of nature’s cynics. Yet most significantly throughout the whole inconvenience, I didn’t pout or think negatively, not for a second. In the days I went without a toilet - which is quite a challenge - I used my (very kind) neighbour’s, or went to the library or nearby doctor’s surgery. When an ill-advised late-night can of Pepsi Max crept up on my bladder at 3.00 am, I grabbed an old plastic jug formally reserved for ironing water and got on with it. An added problem was that the contractor also advised me not to use my shower or bath until it was all fixed. Oh well, I thought and utilised my leisure centre card, using the showers in the gym changing room.
It was a pain in the neck. A massive pain in the neck at the most emotionally vulnerable time. And yet all I could think was how much worse others in my situation could potentially have it. I was going to be fine. The toilet would work again. As would my heart.
My marriage broke down and then my toilet broke down. I say this without a trace of snide nor snark but the one that proved to be the bigger matter of immediate urgency wasn’t the one I’d have previously assumed - from a ‘Maslow’s hierarchy of needs’ perspective anyway. This opened my eyes. Not just to what I was missing but all the things to be grateful for: a roof over my head, enough food in the fridge, two extremely loving parents, the fact that there were no children to be emotionally harmed by the separation, friends so incredible that one day I’ll write a separate piece detailing just how deep their generosity has run, Frasier.
(I’ll stop now before I start sounding like a Matt Haig self-help book).
Now that it’s fixed, I also have the blessed ability to pee whenever I need to and take it for granted. Not that I will.
I am not superwoman. I am not completely healed. I am under no illusions that more difficult times, possibly very very very difficult times might lie ahead. I hope not but who knows.
But I am stable. After such a dangerous spell of self-loathing, it was less important I learned to love myself than learned to like myself. Which I do. People have often encouraged me that outside of the relationship I was in almost from adolescence, I will get to discover who I really am. I feel in the last week or so, I’ve remembered who I always was. Resilient. Resourceful. Honest. Humble. Witty. Loyal. Creative. Lovable.
Worthy of guilt-free happiness.
Separation is one of life’s biggest stressors, a bereavement with no one sending you flowers (although, actually, a lovely friend did bring me some beautiful sunflowers the other day. I digress.). I don’t want to make the mistake of thinking I am out of the woods mentally or emotionally. But I’m certainly better. Much, much better. The fact I’ve been able to finally write this substack is proof.
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