Monday, April 04, 2005

The Way to My Heart is My Stomach

Something weird is brewing up inside of me, and I just can't seem to get rid of it. I know I promised myself not to write while at work and today is not exactly a great day to flout that self-imposed rule because I have a couple of deadlines to meet and a few meetings to attend. But I can't help me; I just need to write now.

I don't know about you but I think my stomach tells me a lot about stuff close to my heart.

For one, my stomach never fails to rumble a few times in a day; whether I am really hungry as a function of my metabolic processes or my mouth is just itching and craving for something to munch and crunch on. Whatever the cause, the reaction is the same: I eat, because I know from experience that if I were to not heed the sign from my stomach, I would become very grouchy and very unreasonably upset.

On a similar note, my stomach pulls a sharp and painful one on me when it's time to go. I'm not one to have a 'fixed daily schedule', and I only go when I need to (or when my stomach says so). So when the pain does come and it is time to go, I'd better go. Again, I have learnings from experience that I don't think need further explanation.

And I have also had some other kind of wonderful and not-so-wonderful feelings in my stomach before, that relates not to my physiological state. I first experienced butterflies in my stomach when I was still in my school days, running for the school track team. The first time I stepped onto the track in front of the raving crowd at the huge national stadium, getting ready to run my first-ever individual race, I remember distinctly I had all these weird 'things' fluttering in my stomach. I was more nervous than I was excited, and I just wished the one-minute race hadn't felt like eternity instead. In fact, the butterflies never went away and they were always there whenever I had any individual race again.

The next time I felt butterflies again in my stomach, however, was a sweet sweet memory. Those were the early days, about six years ago, when the man and I first got together. Every touch, every moment of closeness, every kiss brought about all these 'weird' feelings again in the stomach that I would never fail to recognize. It's them butterflies again, fluttering around in my stomach. But this time, I was feeling more excited and exhilarated, and ok, maybe a little nervous then. The same ol' creatures but bringing different senses of joy.

Such an unexplanable feeling is something I would never forget; sometimes even as I reminisce about those sweet early times, I can actually conjure up the butterflies in my stomach, and actually feel them. Do I still get those butteflies now with the man? Well, sometimes, but not in a long while. Is this how life always ends up?

My stomach gets knotted up at times too, when I'm feeling not-too-great. Sometimes it's just a slight turn now and then I feel in the stomach, and I know there's no real issue on hand, but perhaps just something nibbling incessantly on my mind and causing unnecessary worry. Yes, I am very prone to that: unnecessary worrying. And it's usually my mind playing tricks on myself, me playing devil's advocate to myself. Honestly, the man hates this stage, and I really hate it too.

I even thought I experienced clinical depression once before, though never medically proven by a shrink. (I checked the topic up on the Internet, and found myself experiencing many of the listed symptoms and so convinced myself.) It happened not too long ago, and I remember how I was feeling. How my stomach was feeling. The stomach was perpetually knotted up, never relaxed. It repulsed everything I tried to ingest, and the stomach was so busy feeling recoiled and knotted up, the hunger pangs never came. I ate so little, my skinny frame lost more weight than I already should. The butterflies were nowhere to be felt; the stomach was simply feeling... horrible.

I knew I was ok again, when I started eating like a horse again (do horses really eat a lot?). I have put a little weight back on, but never managed to fill out my old size 2 clothes again. And I never want to feel those horrible crammy feelings in my tummy again.

The past couple of days, however, my stomach's been feeling weird again. No, not the butterflies. Hunger pangs still strike. But there's just something else that's funny - in a not-so-good way. It's telling me I'm worrying about something again, and it's making me malfunctioning a little today.

I hate this, and I really want this to go away. Shoo.

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