Imagine: you are sitting with your friends enjoying some ice cream when suddenly, your stomach makes a rumble that is louder than an angry dinosaur. You now know that the rest of your day is ruined, and there is nothing stopping the nausea/sickness that will inevitably ensue for the next few hours. This may sound like a horror story, but this is the curse of lactose intolerance.
Honestly, I do not remember a day where I did not have to question what I ate. I go out to restaurants and have to look at the menu thinking about which dairy products the chefs could have put into each dish in order to ruin my life. I have to live in a world without pizza, ice cream, milk shakes, and many other delicious delicacies. No one understands this struggle aside from me and all of my fellow lactose intolerant pals.
Every single time my stomach is aching, I literally google how much it would cost to get a stomach transplant. I have even considered killing someone, harvesting their stomach, and then placing it into my body just to feel some sort of relief. (OK, this was a joke, but that is how awful it is.) When I am feeling sick, I will go to the ends of the earth to feel better, no matter the consequences.
I am beyond envious of my friends that do not have to question what they eat. They get to live their lives care free and happy without a single question in their minds about whether their stomachs will defy them. They do not have to longingly look at food and decide whether or not to willingly and knowingly ruin their day. This is a struggle, people.
Sometimes, I decide to be bold and eat ice cream or pizza. Tasting these things is a delight. People don't realize that they take dairy for so much granted. They say that you don't realize what you have until it's gone... *sighs*. In the moment, eating these things seems so right... But then, within an hour or so, bam. There it is. I realize that I have just made the most grave mistake of my life. This is usually when the regret sets in.
Honestly, though, what kind of betrayal is this that my own body defies me in this way? Processing food is supposed to be a natural occurrence, yet my body has to be dramatic and make everything complicated. How childish of it. Why couldn't I have gotten a stomach that behaves like everyone else's? Instead, I got one that has the temperament of a toddler. If my stomach could start being able to process dairy, that would be grate. (See what I did there?)
