The cramps were the worst the first year they decided to show up. They would leave me curled up in a ball on the couch, twisting and turning as I clutched my stomach, contorting my body into all kinds of shapes in search for a more comfortable position that did not exist. Who had decided that it made any sense for your own body to cause itself so much pain?
The second time the cramps arrived, I emptied my insides completely. I was lucky not to have been very familiar with the contents, having had the chance to be acquainted only a few times in much earlier childhood. They might as well have been strangers to me, it had been so long, but as they got up one by one to introduce themselves, I discovered they were not so unfamiliar at all.
‘Hello, you should know me very well,’ a little reddish blob with pointy ears and droopy lilac eyes said to me. ‘Why, we were just having a lively discussion yesterday about how you haven’t been honest with your progress these past few weeks, how your behavior lately has been the lazy sort, even if no one else tells you so, how you need to be careful so you don’t feed the monster inside of you such that it grows too big and makes you a monster yourself to the people around you. That is all correct, is it not?’
I nodded my head weakly. He was right about all that, of course, and hearing it all out loud made me feel even more guilty. It lasted only a moment, though, before the pain brought me back to gasping for breath as I tried to figure out how I would possibly endure each additional second of agony. All that stuff from the little red guy, I guess, I’d deal with once there weren’t blaring pain alarm bells sounding at annoyingly high volumes all over my midsection.
A little purple blob emerged from the mix, practically bouncing out of the colorful crowd milling around my tiled living room floor.
‘Hello, well this isn’t very fun at all!’ the little violet guy chirped.
‘No,’ I groaned, ‘Not fun at all.’ I winced as pangs of sharp pain made me wonder if I had somehow swallowed a handful of unmeltable icicles without realizing it that morning.
‘But it could be worse, you know! Some people have diseases that make them feel like this every day! Some people don’t have a couch to lie on! Some people—’
I groaned loudly, trying to keep tears from escaping my eyes. ‘I know I don’t have it the worst! I’ll remember this, alright? I’ll be grateful for every single day after this that I’m not in mind-numbing pain!’
The little purple blob shut its mouth, and nodded approvingly, letting its face assume a more solemn expression as it turned back to join the crowd.
Who was next, I wondered?
A dark green blob with tiny glasses and a wrinkled forehead sauntered up to my face almost immediately.
‘Hello. Well, this is an unfortunate situation seeing as on your docket you had meant to have finished the AA book by 1:15pm, the BB assignment by 1:46pm, replied to the CC message by 1:50, finish your DD refreshment by 1:57pm, do your EE chore by 2:43pm, start your FF project by 3:14pm—I mean, it’s already 4:52pm and the only thing you’ve done is drink some water, so I guess that counts as part of your DD refreshment, but really, don’t you think you ought to just ignore all of this for now and get going on this TO DO LIST, I mean surely, you’re not the only one to have ever experienced this, and you know, maybe you can just push through it and ignore all your bodily sensations and stick to the plan, and think, you really might regret not having gotten some of this done, it’s not like there will be more time tomorrow…’ The dark green blob trailed off as it caught sight of my face. I was really going to cry now, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of my stomach anymore. The green blob sighed, and slowly backed into the crowd. ‘All right, all right, special circumstance…maybe there’s some way to save this situation after all, rescheduling, re-allotting time, reprioritizing, I don’t know, everything might end up being awful, I’ll see what I can do…’
Another spasm in my midsection made my whole body quiver forcefully. I squirmed, and rolled to lay flat on my back, trying to see if that would help ease the sensations. I was staring at the ceiling, trying to regulate my breathing when I felt a little poke on my left cheek. Then, a little yellow blob with big, round ears and gentle red eyes scurried up my face to perch itself on my nose, forcing me to go cross-eyed just to look at it.
“Hello, uh.’ The blob gulped. ‘Uh, I guess I just wanted to…’ The red eyes blinked several times bashfully. ‘Uh, you know. At least it’s just your stomach and not like. Everywhere. And like. No blood or anything, you still have your eyes and ears and arms and legs and stuff. So, yeah…’ I tried to nod as I still struggled to make my breathing more regular. ‘I’ll, uh, I’ll get going now.’ The little yellow blob jumped off my face in a hurry, and I turned to look back at the little crowd of colors milling about on the tiles.
They were starting to arrange themselves in a kind of order, I could see, lining up as if checking out of a grocery store. A black blob more stout and round than the rest seemed to be directing the action.
‘COME ON NOW, COME ON NOW, IT’S TIME TO GET GOING,’ I could hear it saying. All the other little blobs seemed to be stumbling around, resisting the orders in a sluggish way. The black blob caught me looking at all of them and immediately rushed up to me. ‘It’s time they all went back where they came from, no? And we’ll get things starting to work better straight away once we knock you out into a totally guaranteed-unconscious state.’ The black blob rushed back to the ranks before I had time to reply. I was so distracted by what was going on that the pain even subsided for a few seconds.
‘LET’S GO!’ bellowed the black blob, and the lines began marching—towards my stomach, I soon realized. I didn’t know how they planned to get back in, but I guessed they must know a way.
‘Don’t forget to CRY if you want to!!! Express your feelings!’ I heard a tiny voice shout out as blobs started jumping and disappearing through the fabric of my t-shirt. ‘No! No self-pity! Do NOT feel sorry for yourself!’ another little voice yelled. ‘QUIET ALL OF YOU!!!’ the black blob screamed.
It took only a few more moments for my living room tiles to be clean again, wiped of all traces of my insides, the blobs having marched right back where they came from, apparently. The only one left to go was the round, black blob. It waved to me right as it approached my stomach. ‘Goodbye! Sorry about the trouble! We’ll try not to make it happen again! But you gotta keep an eye out on the blobs and your health too, otherwise they’ll get squirmy and want to escape again! Sleep well!’ It jumped in, again, before I had a chance to say anything. And then immediately, I was out.