Food Allergies- I’m talking to you.

This, of necessity, will have to be written in fits and starts. (Milena McGraw, After Dunkirk)

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As a beginning, why don’t I bring up the impossibility of naming you? I have no idea what you really are. I have read and heard so many things. If you occur within a certain time frame after ingestion, you are most likely allergies. If you occur later, intolerances. Allergies show up on blood tests. Intolerances are just medically elusive reactions to food. Indeed, in order to be vague enough, is “reactions” a better term for you? Even then, what if I have some real medical issue and all of you are just various manifestations that I have attributed, rightly or incorrectly to certain foods. Last, but perhaps most feared… what if you are all a great big, crazy daydream I’m having. I just made you up with so much force that I made you real. Then what do I call you and my dramatic bouts of illness? Delusions. And this is a term that I’m doing battle with all the time.

I can’t settle the issue. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and Gentlemen. I am faced with the harsh reality of people who don’t care to get it. I can’t call you allergies, because the only socially acceptable allergies are those that have a visible reaction, like violent skin rashes or anaphylaxis. If an allergy can’t prove its existence, then it’s better not to place that label on it, just in case you offend someone with a “real” allergy. I can’t call you Intolerances, because those are all in your imagination. Another thing to work out with Janna instead of something really happening to my body. Also, if I say that, I’m probably just on that latest fad diet, right?

It makes me so mad I could spit. Or puke, I guess, in my case. If I am making this up (which I doubt) what difference could that possibly make? As a psychosis is it causing me less physical and psychological pain? Is it interfering less with my life? And, just in case I’m not nuts in this particular instance, what if you are just not looking hard enough to find a reason behind it all. What if there were something you COULD fix in me and you just gave up because it’s easier for you to label me and put my disease on your shelf. You told me what to do. Ignore it. That helps with all KINDS of problems, right?

Blame Game

I have the most terrible hope concerning you, food allergies (I really do have to settle, I guess). It is a hope that I know I should not cling to, but that I can’t help but wish for. I hope that my whole life is your fault. I hope that all of my health problems have a stem from you. That if I can avoid you truly that I can be free. All the sinus infections from my childhood, my horrible stomachaches, my migraines, my difficulty concentrating, my massive mood swings, my failing vision, my vocal inconsistencies,  my fainting spells Jr. college year, my tiredness, my inability to fall asleep, my anxiety and my depression- all you. What if you are only two of those things? What if you are only one? What if I avoid like a ninja and still feel ALL of these things? I want it to be you. I want to let you take the blame for everything bad in my life. Because that would make it all easier to take.

Yet, don’t I take it anyway? I feel as though you are my fault. If I was perfect at avoiding you, then I hope I would feel none of these things. So any time I feel them, it’s on me, right? either the problem cannot be blamed on you, and thus the blame falls to me; or I am to blame for eating the wrong foods anyway. It’s all my fault. My fault. My fault. Especially if you don’t really exist, right?

Besides-effects

Guess what. You suck. Let’s just get the rant over with, because I have to say it. You do so many ugly things to my body. When I eat wheat I retain water like only you would believe. Everything about me deflated when I stopped eating it regularly. I get MASSIVE migraines. The kind that make me want to give up on living just to get away from the pain. I get pain in my guts like they are exploding inside me and when I get nauseated I burp sulfur. For days on end.  I get diarrhea pouring painfully out of me for more than a week sometimes. I even throw up. but not the way I do when I decide to do it. Usually for about an hour, and involving a lot of dry heaving and bile. Sometimes the entire roof of my mouth gets a few layers of skin removed and I can’t tolerate solid food for a few days.

And what about the less specific, but seemingly correlated things? The rather intense dizziness that I have felt over the past month or two. The irritability that is probably more correlated to hangryness and pain, but both would be a problem associated with you, right? What about the depression that seems to get much worse in correlation with improper ingestion? Were you the reason I used to faint, despite the doctor’s decision that I was faking?

I just want to let you know right now, I do blame you for my eating disorder. ED had me after a bout or two of binging and purging and it IS an addiction, but you are what I was so afraid of. I definitely blame you. And every day that I have to go feeling nasty like this, the more I blame you. I can barely stand feeling this way. Maybe intolerances is a good name. The whole thing is pretty intolerable.

And if I am afraid of any one thing most, it is that I will never be strong enough to make it stop. I feel like I can’t fight you and ED at the same time. It’s exhausting. You might never go away, and right now ED is pushing harder than ever.

Stop Thief!

Sometimes I feel like a kid in the schoolyard yelling “give me back my toys” to a school bully who has ran off with them. The more I scream, the more likely the bully is to throw them over the fence before the grounds-lady can come stop you. Then I’ll be asked to be the bigger person and move on instead of making a scene. But playing with those toys? That was what I really wanted to be doing that day. I brought them from home special.

You are like that bully. You took away food. I really like food. I like the variety of tastes and the endless possibilities when combining flavors and textures to make something new. I’m even good at it. You robbed me of the enjoyment of tasting as I create for others. You made all of my favorite things actually inaccessible to me. And… let’s be honest. I’m mourning even the things you took from me that I didn’t care for much either way just because I don’t think you had any right to take that from me. I am starting to believe the “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” thing. But I’m still holding my grudge. I can’t believe you would do that to me.

I am also angry because you don’t just cost me the foods I can’t partake of without my body throwing a tantrum. You cost me my time, which is very precious to me, both the time I spend being too miserably ill to do much and the time it takes to make ANYTHING I can eat. You also cost actual money. enough to make it necessary for me to demand that my sensitive and earnest husband provide more for me. You aren’t just hurting me! You are taking time and money away from my family, and I can’t stand it. You owe me big.

Light at Tunnel’s End

I do mean big. I can see it, though. There is this person in my mind that I can see so vividly when I think about what this could become. She’s got a long braid down her back, a bandanna on her head and a long jean dress covered in dirt from working in the garden. She has got food growing or stored to take care of her allergies in case of an emergency. Her kids help her weed and water her garden as everyday chores. She has a lot of specialty recipes and lots of specific appliances in her kitchen, the result of slow gathering. She has ceased hating you and begun to enjoy the fruits of a life lived without the bondage of the side effects you bring along for the ride. She has a system for cleaning and preparing in the kitchen that allows her to keep on top of the needs of herself, her family, and her neighbors. She smiles wide as she wipes her forehead, leaving a dirty smear that she doesn’t care about. Now that she’s done in the kitchen and garden, she has time to spend with her family, friends, or writing a blog about how she has slowly gathered herself into a functional place.

Some of this is just not probably going to happen. But some of it is absolutely within my reach, and I want it so badly, I salivate a little. I want this woman to be me. I want her peace. And I will grow into something like this because I think I must. It seems to be a choice between this and bitterness. I don’t want to choose bitterness anymore.

Even now, I can feel these words helping me to let go.

Dear food allergies. Welcome to my life. May I have the forbearance to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to tell the difference.

With growing acceptance,

Jo Aich