minor shit

So, among the rather more detrimental and uncomfortable and upsetting ramifications from the overwhelmingly negative circumstances of my upbringing, I have a couple of silly ones. Some are habits that I picked up because it my parents, others were meant to cope with other authority figures like teachers.

Now, I get kidney stones. A lot. A few times a year. It is incredibly, insurmountably painful. They're a pretty common medical condition but it's typically found in elderly people--who are more likely to have a high-sodium, high-cholesterol body makeup that assists in forming stones. It's really unusual in someone my age who otherwise has healthy kidneys and I actually had my first one at sixteen. That's insanely young. Most likely it's the result of just not drinking enough. Of anything. (Newsflash: you don't need eight glasses of water a day, you will actually know when you are dehydrated and need to drink, and other liquids and most foods that aren't water still give you fluid intake.) I still don't drink as much a day as I do. I keep myself chronically dehydrated. There are days where I have just a single glass of water or juice and no other liquids.

Obviously this is not a good thing. It never ends well for me. But I think I know why I do it.

My high school implemented a lot of its rules with a nearly Gestapo-like zeal. I'm not saying rulebreaking should be tolerated universally, but it just isn't okay to enforce the rules to the point of ludicrousness. I got a detention once because when a teacher asked me how long my skirt was in the back--school rules dictated they had to be fingertip length but I have a very large backside so skirts tend to be a bit shorter in back than in front--and I answered, 'I dunno, I can't see the back.'

One thing they hated a lot was... people going to the bathroom. A lot of people have clockwork bladders. Within a certain time period every day, following meals or something, you just have to go. Teachers didn't like this because they always assumed you were going to cut class. Some teachers even handed out limited bathroom passes per semester. Two was pretty common, and I don't know anyone who has to pee just twice over the course of several months. They hated it when you asked during class, to which they tended to respond, 'You should've gone before you got here! You're interrupting class time!!' But they would literally lock you out if you turned up a nanosecond after the bell rang--forcing a lot of kids to have to explain 'unexcused absences' from classes when they get phone calls. So no matter when you thought it was going to be safe for a toilet break, it never was.

Anyway.

To combat this I just tried to make sure I didn't have to pee in school. A feat I accomplished by not drinking. Anything. At all. All day. Often without eating as well. I dunno about anyone else, but if I'm busting I can't think of anything else until the situation is remedied. I kept myself chronically dehydrated just so I wouldn't incur the unfair and unjustified wrath of my teachers.

I still do it.

It sucks.