#aching-tummies

"Mmmph...ouch...ugh..." I pat my stomach a few times, dislodging a pitifully small puff of air that brings little-to-no relief. My stomach is stewing, livid at the twice-reheated leftovers I polished off after an exhausting shift. A sickly burble rises, clearly audible in the silence of the bedroom.

Unnngh...shut up! It was either finish the packed lunch or go hungry--you'd be just as angry if I threw out the remainder of the (once) food and got into bed without eating anything. Lousy, useless stomach. I worked all day and I ate something--now do your damned job and digest it!

I curl my hand into a fist and slam it down on my misbehaving belly. The impact causes a sharp cramp in my angry guts and I curl around the new pain, still mentally cussing out my distressed innards for not fulfilling their function. My stomach continues to burble and whine as I squeeze the hybrid of hunger and indigestion. The leftovers from my lunch were barely enough for four mouthfuls of food--clearly not enough to fill a hungry tummy after more than seven hours without eating anything (lunch break happened early on in my shift because the only employee that could cover breaks demanded to be off by 1PM).  

Something sour rises up my esophagus and I frantically swallow it back down. I'm exhausted--too tired to get up and locate a proper receptacle for vomit. There's no way I'm going to let myself spew on my sheets. Nope. Throwing up here means I'll have to strip the soiled sheets and wash them...even if I don't bother with re-making the bed, the act of stripping and washing the sheets sounds far too daunting for someone that's too exhausted to sit up and dive for the wastebasket that's somewhere in the room. My stomach lets out an indignant burble, unhappy at the sick that was returned to it. Hunger rumbles ominously, quickly interrupted by another indignant sound of indigestion.

Fuck off! Hungry or upset? You can't be both. I punctuate this thought with yet another fist to my gut. The resulting sickly snarl goes ignored as I'm too exhausted to bother reacting anymore. I continue to swallow, to try and get the sour feeling out of the back of my throat.

"Whoa! That didn't sound good." I peek at the door to my bedroom, arm covering my eyes. You're leaning casually against the doorframe, having been lured to my room by the sound of a distressed tummy. "Want me to rub your tummy?"

"I--" I'm cut off by a loud, liquidy rumble that booms out of my gut. I curl up, swallowing desperately and considering the benefits of stripping a pillowcase to act as a makeshift receptacle. "Ooh...o-oh..." I can't help but moan even as I swallow compulsively. It hurts. My entire digestive tract seems to be rebelling, trying to purge the nasty mess I swallowed...only...no part of my guts appears to be in agreement about what direction to purge the mess from. My intestines are intent on sending the mess upward while my stomach pushes right back, refusing to accept what it had so gleefully passed onto the intestines. The lower part of my esophagus seems to desperately want stuff to exit the way it went in, but my throat and my head are equally desperate to keep the gorge down.

"Aww...poor tummy. So upset..." You've wandered into the room and the turbulance from you sitting down on the edge of the bed is not doing my stomach any favors. It lets out a low snarling noise, like a dog grumbling as it gears up to bite at something annoying.

You slide a hand over my noisy belly, setting off more upset noises and cramps.

"MmPH--" I swallow against a burp that fights hard to get out. The two forces cancel out, leaving me very uncomfortable and adding to the ire brewing within me. With every movement of your palm, you draw an unwitting moan or other sound out of my lips. We manage to work up a few burps that are thankfully just burps, but they are pitiful and cautious because of the many times something hot and sour was forced up with the air.

"Mmmffph...ugh...aaahh...s-stop...tummy...please stop...stop hurting..." I whimper and plead with my stubborn stomach as it clenches within me, twisting painfully and making me feel like something has wound my intestines up like one would twirl spaghetti on a fork. I've been curled up like a shrimp in bed for the better part of the last five hours. Apparently, my guts decided that we hate dairy today. Would have been nice to get a memo.

We stayed up last night. Secret-identity and social deduction games are my favorite and our friends decided to stay up last night to play a few rounds. We started around 10:30PM and I saw 4:31AM on the clock when we finally said our final 'gg's. Poor choice, but I decided it'd be fine as long as I grabbed coffee before my shift at work was due to start in about 6 hours. Not the best, but I promised to go to bed early tonight to make up for it.

A baptism of iced coffee probably wasn't how my stomach wanted to be woken up this morning and I guess it's been grumpy with me ever since. On top of that, when I arrived at work it turns out my coworker had decided to buy me an extral large hot coffee as 'thanks' for something I did for them before. It would have been rude to turn it down so I accepted it and alternated between the hot coffee and the iced one throughout my shift. The variance in temperatures and dairy did not play nice with my already-grumpy tummy, it seems. It was starting to feel uneasy around the last hour of my shift.

I walked by a bubble-tea place on my way to the bus stop and saw that they were having a special series on milk-tea. I got paid a couple of days ago and it's been a long and hard week at work (training new hires) so I decided to treat myself. I got a little something for you too, asking for no ice in case you're not home to drink it immediately when I get there (and therefore it won't dilute).

Upon arriving home, I found out that I was not the only one that bought a treat for the other. You stopped by our favorite noodle house and got us two combos...combos that come with more milk-tea. Unfortunately, the ice in your drinks is fading fast, so we have to enjoy them tonight. The other half of my own drink was left as an afterthought as we powered through dinner.

After dinner, you decided to hop back on the computer to game and do whatever. I mentioned turning in early and that's basically what I tried to do...only I realized that I still had half of my own drink to finish and boba gets hard if you leave it too long...so...well...down the hatch.

The glutinous boba was delicious. Unfortunately, that firm-ish, slimey gel ended up gumming up the works inside of the war raging in my guts. 'We hate dairy. We hate dairy.' I swear the grumbles from my guts are chanting that on a loop. I wouldn't be surprised if digestive fairies manifested and are inside, using spells to make my stomach contents churn and prodding absolutely everything with tiny pitchforks.

Iced coffee. Hot coffee. Boba milk tea. Straight up milk tea. My dairy count is at four--more than double what I'd planned. The sheer amount of dairy would have been enough to give me some nasty indigestion, but the greasy noodle combo and the boba are compounding the upset. It feels like the boba is gumming up my intestines, coating them and preventing them from working on the oily slurry of noodles and dairy. My guts are cramping like a vice every couple of minutes, desperately trying to make digestion happen and having no success.

I don't feel nauseous. All of this didn't come at me all at once--it was gradual. There isn't enough in any one part of my gastro-intestinal tract to cause me to be on the verge of puking...unless the toxic slurry decides to move backwards (which it hasn't yet...thank God). Pity. Throwing up might have made me feel just a little better. Getting some of that nastiness out of my system would probably help at least a little. Instead, I just feel like tiny grenades are exploding throughout my gastrointestinal tract. I swear, everything hurts, from my colon spasming (despite not having anything to offer the porcelain throne) to my esophagus burning with heartburn or an acid splash...or both. On top of it all, my stomach-organ and intestines have been churning away, being extremely vocal about the day-long torture inflicted upon them now that I've finally got a minute to actually be mindful of the sensations inside of me.

"Ugh...stop...please stop hurting!" I plead with my stomach, squeezing it tighter and trying to counter the vice-like cramp rolling like a wave through my intestines. I swear, it feels like a giant decided to pinch a section of my intestines between thumb and forefinger and run that squeeze through the entire length of the tube...like trying to squeeze the last dregs of toothpaste out of a tube or getting sauce out of a packet.

I spy my phone on the mattress--abandoned when the cramps in my tummy got too intense for me to ignore any longer. Reaching for it, I find the contact I'm looking for and hit 'Call'. I'm wracked by an intense cramp that feels like I'm being pinched in half and it causes me to press the phone into my spasming tummy instead of bringing it to my ear.

*Grbl...rrrr...rrrble...* My stomach sounds like a motor-cycle at a stop-light, contantly revving without getting anywhere.

The call gets disconnected and I've forgotten all about it, going back to begging my stomach to calm down and having my tears soak into the pillow. "Unngh...d-damn it--shut up!" I hiss at my stomach and slam a fist down onto it for good measure. Instant regret shoots through me along with the stabbing pain I feel from the impact site.

"You say something?"

You lean against the doorframe to the bedroom, curious as to where I've been since dinner. Your phone is held in one hand. Apparently, you got my call.

"Uhh..." A loud rumble from my stomach answers before I do. The sickly noise is quickly followed by another sharp spasm and I moan, curling even tighter around my aching abdomen.

"Was that your stomach?"

I see white for a moment, my hearing fading too as my entire world dissolves into the pain at my core. I can feel everything tensing up from colon to esophagus. I can't imagine literally having my guts rupture would feel much worse than what it feels like right now.

As I regain my senses, I feel a foreign weight on my aching tummy. You're stroking over it carefully, the foreign weight being your ear pressed against the crest of my gut.

"Mmmph..." I wince as I feel another spasm ripple through my intestines.

"Shh!" You shush me, wanting to listen to the chaos inside of me rather than me.

Honestly, my stomach was throbbing when I was about 90% through with the food. I refused to waste good broth though, so down the hatch! I knew I'd bitten off more than I could chew when I saw that look in your eyes.

To onlookers, we're just a run o' the mill couple engaging in some casual PDA as we stroll through the commercial district. You've got your arm around my waist, keeping it above my hip (corutesy/modesty points for you). Nobody would look twice at us. Nobody would ever suspect what's really going on.

The second we step off of the curb, crossing the first of four intersections between us and the right bus stop, my stomach sloshes audibly. You had just been keeping your palm pressed gently to my stomach, but the sudden convulsion and the noticeable 'slosh' awoke something inside of you. My grunt of discomfort being cut off by a wet hiccup definitely didn't help matters either.

You keep me upright. To onlookers, it'd appear that I stumbled and you were kind enough to keep me from eating pavement. What's really happening though is that my body twitched, trying to curl around my tight, sloshy tummy--trying to calm the turbulence of my straining gut. You used the movement to subtly press harder against my tummy, trapping me against your side and intentionally jostling my stomach. You can feel the firm, but not hard curve of my stomach-organ under your palm. You squeeze it, delighting in the wet burp and hiss it draws from my throat as I bat at your arm. You pretty much carry me across the intersection, my feet barely skimming the pavement as you resolutely march across to the other curb, most of my weight suspended on your arm, putting even more pressure on my bloated gut. It's all I can do to focus on keeping my meal inside of me--still stubbornly refusing to waste that broth.

"Ugh...quit it!" I hiss at you as we get onto the new curb. You squeeze my belly with your strong fingers, effectively shutting me up as I bite my tongue to avoid spewing here and now.

We continue our journey to the bus stop like so, with me dreading the other intersections. I spy a bench for another bus stop before us. This one marks the halfway point. The bus to our place only stops at the far end of the commercial district…so the one up ahead won't get us where we need to go. I long to sit on that bench, to recline and to give my straining tummy some much-needed TLC. You're doing your best impression of a locked seatbelt, so I doubt I'll get my wish. Any slack given by our jostling movements is eaten up by your arm squeezing me even tighter, your fingers digging deeply into my gut. You occasionally seem to drum your fingers--flexing them into the squishy firmness that is my gut.