I’d answered that question so many times to doctors, but saying it out loud in a room that wasn’t clinical felt different. It felt like pulling a thread on a sweater and watching a whole history unravel.
“Sixteen,” I said. “We were at a beach trip. Mom made shrimp skewers. I ate two and got sick that night. My stomach cramps were so bad I thought something burst. Then I threw up for hours. I got dizzy. My skin got blotchy.”
“And what did your family say?” she asked.
I laughed without humor. “That I ate too much sun. Or that I worked myself up. Or that I was being sensitive.”
After that, I avoided shellfish. But it didn’t stop there.
At seventeen, a glass of milk left me nauseous and faint. At eighteen, a cookie with nuts made my tongue tingle and my throat feel thick. By nineteen, even small exposures made my body react. I started carrying antacids and nausea meds and pretending it was normal to be terrified of potlucks.
The constant theme wasn’t the illness. It was the way I had to perform calm so I didn’t get punished for being “difficult.”
In college, I got so fatigued I couldn’t focus in class. I had brain fog, body aches, and a stomach that always seemed angry. When I told my parents I thought something was wrong, Mom said, “Everyone’s tired in college.”
When a campus doctor suggested allergy testing, my parents scoffed. “They’re always looking for something to bill,” Dad said. “You’re stressed. That’s it.”
So I learned to doubt my body. I learned to interpret warning signs as weakness. I learned to push through reactions because I was tired of being the problem.
The therapist leaned forward slightly. “That’s a form of gaslighting,” she said gently. “Not always intentional. But when someone repeatedly dismisses your reality, you start dismissing it too.”
“That’s exactly it,” I whispered, surprised by the sting of tears. “I started thinking maybe I was crazy.”
When I moved into my own apartment, the first thing I bought wasn’t furniture. It was control. A pantry full of safe foods. Labels. A whiteboard list of triggers. A small medical bag for the wall.
The second thing I bought was a sense of privacy I’d never had at my parents’ house: the freedom to be sick without being mocked.
But the past didn’t leave just because I changed my address.