If you had one hour
People often ask each other what they would do if they knew that they only had one more day left to live, and answers vary from outright ludicrous to melt-your-heart sweet. I am not so grievously morbid as to pose the “one day left” question. But a thought has long existed in my head: forget a whole day. A day seems something too huge to obtain, a “golden fleece” that is always out of my (your) grasp, an illusionary carrot that will never come to fruition. So instead I will unleash the question, what would you do if you had one IC-free hour?
It would work something like this: You would randomly be given an hour. To be fair, names would be drawn from a hat or an empty bag. You would know when your hour was going to occur, but you would have no say over what day. Hours would occur at times when society was functional in case you wanted to partake in something that only operates from 9-5.
For one hour you would not feel IC; it would halt to exist (all other afflictions would also be banished for one hour, so that you could genuinely enjoy your time). Whatever you did (in terms of physical activity, eating, etc) would not harm you during that hour or afterwards. I am not implying that ICers aren’t worthy of a day, of course we are, but let’s just say for the sake of it, that one hour was all we could obtain. What would you do? Would you have cooked a feast of “forbidden” foods, waiting fork in hand for the clock to strike your first moment, then lapping up citrus fruit, coffee and mountains of chocolate? Would you make love, as you have yearned for so long, pain free, wild and uninhibited, able to let your soul reverberate with each breath of air, each tiny move. Would you cuddle your dearest to your body, your stomach, and not flinch when their weight caressed your belly? Perhaps put on your tightest pants, just for the heck of it, hey throw in a belt as well.
Would you let your little child squeeze you around the middle, at their height, instead of you getting on the ground to reach them without pain? Would you scream in delight and cry with happiness? Would you ride a horse, a motorcycle, a bicycle or maybe just roller blade? Would you watch the clock each moment? Would you board up the bathroom, knowing full well that in less then sixty minutes you’d have to pry out those nails. Would you jut sit there and bask in the glory of being symptom free, as if absorbing the first warm rays of springtime sunshine? Would you believe it was true? Would you know how to feel, for one becomes accustomed to things we should never accept far to easily, and we learn to live with chronic pain and IC symptoms; such is the nature of the beast. Do you remember how it felt before you developed IC?
What would bring you happiness and joy, tranquillity or satisfaction? How would you pass just one hour (not to imply that you would always be inflicted with IC after that, not at all, but remission or a complete “cure” are, tragically, not common IC occurrences, and I have long been a subscriber to the theory that it is best to be realistic with one’s self) of time?
It would be human nature to dread each second because you would know that the “dream” would end, that your carriage would once more be a pumpkin. I’m not trying to make IC sound like the biggest Hell that exists on the face or the earth, but let’s face it, IC is not exactly a stroll in the park for most people.
Would you let your body live it, breathing from the depth of your being, encapsulating each second to pull you through the rough days of the future, like we did as kids when the reality that summer vacation was inching dangerously close to an end, and that the scent of linoleum and chalk dust would once again fill our little nostrils. So we harboured all the warmth and magic, fun and memories we could gather and let them pull us through the next year, as we notched days into the soft wood of our desks until June would end once more. Would you do as little as possible or as much as you could fit in? (Having sex while eating, on a trampoline in outrageously tight clothing, perhaps). When your hour ended, no bells would chime, no sinister clash of lightening would illuminate the sky, instead you would just feel like you had sixty-one minutes ago.
This idea is nothing more than a fantasy. I have no power to grant your hour, though I wish I did. It is just a question to make you stop and imagine what the worth of one single hour could be to you and how it would feel to be IC free for those 3600 seconds. Knowing that once you had sipped the nectar of one hour, tasted life as you once knew it, could you handle returning to your former state? Would it empower you to strive even harder for a means by which to feel “good” all the time? If this hour were real, would you accept or decline, and if you agreed how would you spend each moment?