Interstitial Cystitis Advice

As the day of love approaches let us reflect on that four-letter word for a few moments. Love has centred countless movies, filled libraries full of books (both utter tripe and remarkably excellent, the majority falling someplace in between), consumed the airways for as long as radio has existed and the throats of singers for all of time. We give love a thousand names, we curse it and we pray for it. Leave it or adore it, love is a pinnacle of society. It cannot be ignored and cannot be forgotten. It’ll be a frosty day in hell before any of us say we love IC, but having IC doesn’t mean we still can’t love other things, people, and experiences.

I encounter a minority of people (patients) in the medical world who seem more bitter then a lemon wedge dipped in vinegar, their ability to show empathy so foregone it’s picture should grace milk cartoons. People for whom illness has become an act of competition, say you spent three days in bed with a flare and they say they spent four. Trumping their peers has become their way of coping, it’s sad really, so sad. My heart goes out to these people, but at the same time we all make our own beds; I mean one can only be excused for so long. And when I see these folks with their dagger tongues and voices of spite, you have to wonder as the group “The Black Eyed Peas” have asked, “where is the love” in their lives?

This article isn’t just about the love between couples; it’s about love in general. The word love means to feel deep, powerful emotion (typically in a positive way) towards someone or something. I am not aware of any language on this planet that does not contain at least one word for love. Scientists have tried to unravel what it is that causes love to occur, but cupid won’t reveal his secretes so easily.

Love is like water, purity exists but so does contamination. People have used the word love as their defence (motive) behind crimes, to justify wars (love of a woman; Troy, love of their religion...well, when my adding machine stops I’ll ante up a number), to sell products, to get you to lay on a shrink’s plush couch, to control and manipulate you, to help you-the list goes on and on.

Love can be lonely, love can be happy; love can be just about anything to anyone of us. Think about five things (not people) you would say you love, easy as pie (or cake or cookies), name ten things, thirty, fifty-it’ll take a few minutes but you’ll get there. Okay now name me 5 people you love, not love because you feel obligated to say you love them, I mean genuinely love.

It is said if you can count the number of friends you have on one hand you are fortunate, if you need two hands you are blessed and if you need your toes you must be rich (okay I’ve adapted that one myself). Who ranks in your list of love, family, significant other, friends-it needn’t even be people you know any more. We all had first loves (most of us did not end up with said person), and people we loved and lost. Not everyone will love the same number of times or in the same ways, love is as unique to each of us as our fingerprints. Love has long baffled me, yet I know it well enough to trust it, again and again.

Love burns as easily as it soothes and it can torment us for eternity or cherish us endlessly. A lot of the power behind love is self-created. Love can be for a person, an animal, a place, a memory, a song, a book-anything. But the love that will follow us until our last breath of air, that is the love we crave most. If you find this fabled (but not entirely impossible) love you are rare soul.

We too easily settle for what we think is love, we tell ourselves attention equals love, affection equals love, sex equals love, money equals love. Who loved (or loves) you the most in your life, your parent’s, your siblings, your best friend, your spouse? And how did you know that they loved you so much? What did this love make you feel?

I am not for one split second coming at love from a holier than thou, love everyone and everything perspective. I say try to get along with everyone, love where ever you can and as deeply as you can, but don’t feel we need to resurrect Woodstock or take your cause to the streets of Calcutta.

Have you ever seen someone newly in love, that sappy grin across their face, their eyes glazed over in passion, ‘tis a beautiful site. If the universe was more empathetic we would all find true love, the right love-love can be true because it is or because you convince yourself it is. No right love is what you are really looking for. In a world of six billion people, have you ever stopped to wonder if perhaps the person you were destined to meet and love (eternally) isn’t also from your home town of seven thousand or even your state (province, county, etc) or country, seems a little far fetched that the puzzle pieces of population would all tumble in such an orderly fashion from the box of humanity.

I am not trying to raise the debate that right love can be created with more than one person, it very well may be. If you are still on the hunt for that person who makes your feet float off the ground, never despair; I can assure you hope breeds possibility. I urge you stop looking though, desperation breeds mistakes. If you are with someone, I genuinely hope that for your well being they love you in all the ways you deserve to be loved.

Heartache, heartbreak, or a heart full of joy. Love is always going to be part of life. Physiologists try to turn it into textbook chapters and many facets of society use it against you. Love is perhaps a human being’s greatest stumbling block; a preverbal Achilles heel and those car commercials with the Swedish model kissing the twenty something executive know it. As does anyone worth their diploma is advertising, marketing, and a bevy of other professions.

Society tells us we need love, and it is right, but it’s a misguided sort or right, like when your dad would smoke but tell you not to. Love is needed because it fosters peace; love is needed because it creates personal happiness and contentment. Love is needed for companionship and who knows, even reproduction of the species. If you don’t feel love (by anyone, and chances are this is just your perception), ask yourself am I being the kind of person I would want to love (aka, would I want to love me) and don’t be prejudice because it’s yourself.

At the risk of sounding like some flaky high school guidance consular, in this misbegotten world of loves and love like euphorias, you have to love yourself. You know this isn’t the easiest of tasks when you’re fit as a fiddle, seems we all have reasons now a days why loving ourselves and being confident is so hard. Or at least that’s what we’ve been brainwashed into believing. Loving yourself isn’t hard, you know “you” better than anyone else, heck you’ve spent every day of your life with yourself. If you don’t love yourself, modify the question from above, and ask (yourself) what would it take for me to love myself. If you say better health that’s a cop out and you know it.

Loving yourself means coming to terms with who you really are, demon or angel, most of us fall in snugly in between. It means accepting your life and the events that brought you to this point for what they are. The future can be changed but even that last heartbeat you just had can never be altered. Loving yourself may involve making changes, perhaps even making sacrifices or difficult choices, but it’s not like a (weight loss) diet or buying a new car, (that one from the commercial with the blond…) things which may only be a part of your life for a while. Love for yourself should be, needs to be there, always. How can you even begin to properly love anyone else in the ways they rightfully deserve to be loved if you don’t love yourself first?

Valentine’s day huh…seems to keep coming back every year. Hallmark loves it, candy companies love it and restaurant owners certainly love it, but do you? Whether you answer yes or no, take a second and ask yourself why? What is it about a day focused on this most primal of human emotions that gives us reason to pause. Why do we even celebrate it anymore? Well if you subtract the commercialism and even the religious connotations of its origin you are left with a dozen roses, no I’m kidding, you are left with the part of each human being that we instinctually know we need and that most of us want to give of ourselves.

For every reason you feel you are hindered to love, ask yourself is this reason really stopping me or do I feel comfortable hiding behind it. Remember IC attacks your bladder not your heart, you are who you always were before IC, only now life has dished you out a fork or two in the road, a hurdle, a challenge. Love that grows from adversity is typically stronger-it binds you differently.

Love is a million things to each of us, no two people will ever love the same no should way, diversity is beautiful. This Valentine’s day, when you think of love, think not about whether you are in a relationship or not, but about what love really means to you and how you can manifest that love in your life. John Lennon had a point you know, but we need more than just love, we need care and empathy as well. So to those people I mentioned whose bitterness has tainted their own blood, I say write “I love you” on a piece of paper and hand it to yourself, see, love is not impossible to achieve, just love yourself first and the rest will follow.