PaddedStag said:
Society will never drop the stigma.
I was standing in line at the grocery, waiting to put my purchases on the belt, and heard a child behind me laughing.
I didn't know I was leaking, and leaving a puddle on the floor.
There is no way to smile and 'Accept' such a thing.
No way around it, that sucks. When you wear a diaper, leaks will happen sometimes. I had switched to a different brand of pull-up (with plastic pants) and was trying on jeans at a department store last year. In the dressing room, I had a sudden bladder contraction and decided to just use my pull-up. Five seconds later it was all down my leg. Thankfully I was wearing
my jeans at the time and not the store's, and they were dark blue. The store wasn't crowded and I made a beeline for the jeans rack and then out the nearest exit, and sat on a plastic bag for the short drive home. I don't wear Attends pull-up anymore: they aren't full-cut in the butt which can prevent them from hugging your body properly, even if the absorbency is quite good.
I don't know anything about you beyond what you've posted, and I realize my status as ABDL means I've been able to wade into this one toe at a time and pull back when necessary... But IMHO this is a situation where the best defense is a good offense. There's an HDIS commercial I see occasionally on TV with a woman shopping at a store and the voiceover says, "The bladder control aisle? You
won't shop here again!" Like hell. (Excluding for the moment that store brands are really bad.) Say you're at the local CVS or Walgreens buying emergency diapers because FedEx lost your package. The person in front of you is buying extra strength headache medicine. The person in front of them is buying strips for their glucose meter. Is your purchase any different? No. It's a medical aid and you shouldn't feel any more embarrassed than anybody else.
Yes, you need to learn to laugh about it. I've had people walk in on me a couple times while changing. On one occasion at the mall, my shorts were at my ankles and I'd just applied barrier cream to my genitals. The latch on the stall apparently wasn't secure and a man suddenly flung it open. Standing there naked, I got a big grin on my face and said "hi!". He should have been more embarrassed than me, as he then proceeded into the next stall and really stunk up the bathroom. I've been wearing more absorbent diapers since then and find that I need to change on-the-fly a lot less.
I think one of the benefits of boards like this is reading other people's stories: the situations they find themselves in and how they manage to cope. If you're dealing with this completely alone, that must be stressful. But there is a whole community here to offer support. No, I don't know what you've had to endure, but please hang out for a while, read old posts, interact, and you might just find your comfort level going up.
PaddedStag said:
I wish I hadn't lived so long, to experience this.
OTOH, you could be Luke Perry.