You’ve read the title. You know what we’re here to talk about.

It’s an overshare, but we’re moving on.

I, Kim, cannot pee in the ocean. This is a fact of not only my adult life, but my life for as long as I can remember. Or at least since the day I figured out that the ocean is kind of scary and may or may not swallow you up if you aren’t careful.

The ocean just gives me a lot of anxiety.

The beach? Love it.

What’s not to love about a place where it’s not only encouraged to lie around without pants on, but to do so with snacks and a drink close by, AND to nap at least once while you’re there?

If you give me a book, some pretzels and a hoodie, you can do whatever you want in the ocean and I’ll be right there waiting for you hours later—most likely sunburned in a place I could have swore I put sunscreen on, and wondering if there’s a popup ice cream shop somewhere. All of this comes crashing down however, when there are no bathrooms.

Which was the case this past weekend.

It was a lovely Saturday afternoon. My sister and I had made the (only slightly) trafficky drive to the beach and were set to spend our afternoon there. Since it was later in the day, we hadn’t brought any snacks because we didn’t want anything to take away from the tacos we were planning on devouring that evening.

We were at what you might call a secret spot so there were no bathrooms in sight, which wouldn’t have been a problem if I didn’t realize I had to pee the moment we stepped onto the sand.

“It’s fine,” I said, “I’m fine.”

She was not fine, said the narrator.

For the next half hour or so, we lay in the sand, my sister studying for an upcoming test and me reading a chapter of a book I will definitely have to reread.

“Do you want to walk down to the water?” my sister said, faux casually.

I thought about saying, “yeah, sure, I just love the water,” but we both would have known I was full of garbage and we also both knew that my only thought for every single one of the last 30 minutes was: I have to pee I have to pee I have to pee I have to pee I have to pee.

Needless to say, we walked down to the water.

I was feeling roughly 0% confident, seeing as my record of peeing in the ocean in the last, say, 10 years of my life was 0. But I had to go, you know? And so I trailed behind her, wondering how many of our fellow beach patrons were pointing and saying, “she’s definitely going to pee in the ocean, let’s watch.”

If they were watching—which, gross­—they would have seen little more than me hopping around, quietly shrieking and gasping and unnecessarily cursing. At one point a wave came in higher than I thought and water splashed up into my eye. Another time I thought I might maybe kind of a little bit go pee, but then I saw a flock of birds and got distracted and so it went away.

Eventually, after thirty minutes of not being able to pee in ocean, I trudged up the beach, lay back down on my towel and re-opened my book.

The good news was that the exorbitant amount of anxiety the water had given me had essentially scared the pee into some back corner of my body. So for the next hour I was able to lie there and read without wondering if my bladder was going to explode, causing Shonda Rhymes to use my story on an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. The bad news was the breeze picked up and my pantsless, unable-to-retain-body-heat existence started to shiver the pee out of hibernation. Thus, around 6:00 p.m. we packed up our bags, made the walk back to our car and drove totally over the speed limit to the taco joint. #criminal #gottafleetofreethepee

In conclusion, I peed.

It wasn’t in the ocean and it probably won’t ever be, but I peed.

To everyone out there whose bladder has got no motion in the ocean, you’re not alone. And to everyone who can’t relate to this story in any way,  you know a lot about my bladder now and I apologize.