The Pity Party Phase

Ever feel like life just keeps handing you insurmountable hurdles to navigate? Like just when you figure life out, something else comes up that you have no idea how to handle?

Sometimes I feel like that too. My health has been one surprise after another over the past decade, and the moment I feel like I have one thing under control, something new pops up. It seems like it’s never-ending.

Get this. I just got my results back from a food allergy/sensitivity test. I’ve been scared to eat certain things, because over the past few months I’ve had really big reactions to foods I normally eat without a problem. I thought I should investigate further instead of living in fear.

Let me preface this all by saying that my whole allergy/eating/body thing is pretty complicated. When I went to the allergist several years ago and got a skin prick allergy test, she actually called in all her nurses to look at my arms because I was such a freak of nature. I had a reaction to almost everything she tested. Ever since my last baby was born, I’ve continued to accumulate more allergies. My seasonal allergies are so intense, and I’ve tried so many treatments that haven’t worked, that my allergist said the only other option is allergy shots. It’s a big financial and time commitment, and I haven’t been willing to jump on board that train. Now that my kids are older, that may be an option; I’m getting a little desperate.

I’m also almost a vegetarian. I really hate meat. I’m not opposed to you eating it, I just don't want to. It tastes gross, and then I think about what it is I’m actually eating and I picture its cute little face and I want to puke right there at the dinner table.

I think it goes back to Wilburina.

When I was a little girl growing up in Africa, we got a pig. I named her Wilburina. She was fat and pink and dirty and beautiful. We made a little wire pen for her in our yard. I visited her every day. I was fascinated by her noises, her girth, the coarse white hairs that grew over her burgeoning belly. I grew very attached to Wilburina. She was filthy and weird and noisy and delightful.

I thought Wilburina was my new pet. I did not realize that Wilburina was meant to provide us with food.

One day while we sat at the table eating lunch, I noticed Wilburina was missing from her pen. I asked where she was. Daddy said we were about to eat her.

And that was the beginning of my almost vegetarian life.

The protein I eat is mostly from beans, legumes, and nuts. Especially peanuts. Peanut butter and I have a long-standing love affair. I could eat peanut butter on anything. Not the sweet, processed junk. No, I’m talking about the kind where you can actually taste the peanuts. And the salt. And the oil. And that’s it.

When we lived in Africa, it was a pretty simple existence. We were in a third world country. No stores in our little village, no paved roads, electricity for four hours an evening from a terrifying, rumbling generator. Legit third world. The jungle was literally in our back yard. Monkeys sneaked up to our back porch and stole our bananas from where we stored them on a tall wooden table. Sometimes we could hear elephants knocking down trees in the dense jungle down the hill from our little brick house. Once, a mean old mongoose broke into our chicken coop and ate all our chickens. Even the helpless, fluffy baby chicks.

It was wild. I grew up in the wilds of Africa. It was a real, raw, outstanding childhood.

While we lived in there, we hired a man who worked for our family named Gabriel. He helped Mom find food, cook it, did things around the house, searched for and killed any snakes that slithered their way into our home, and generally helped keep us alive in that foreign culture.

He also made the world’s best peanut butter.

Gabriel got us fresh peanuts, dirty with rich soil. He shelled the peanuts, filling a bowl with their naked plump rawness, and then roasted them on our giant wood stove. The smell of roasted peanuts was divine, permeating the whole house with deliciousness.

Then Gabriel took the peanuts to our back porch, where we had a meat grinder bolted to the wooden work table. He used a secret mixture of peanuts, oil, and salt, and worked his magic until thick, golden perfection came pouring out of the spout of the grinder. On Peanut Butter Days, my little brother and I hid under the big table, stifling our giggles with dirty hands. When Gabriel turned away, we shot our small bodies out from the shadows and grabbed nibbles of fresh peanut butter. Gabriel always knew we were there, but he chuckled patiently and pretended not to notice hunks of his precious gold mysteriously went missing.

Food is more than nourishment. Food holds memories. Love. Family. Rituals. Realizing that your diet is filled with things you can’t have because they hurt your body is hard, because so many foods have sentimental memories attached to them.

So, back to the test from this week. Before the doctor showed me my results, she said in a weird voice, “Now this is pretty interesting. You’ve definitely got some stuff going on here.”

Well that’s never good…

I’m allergic to FORTY TWO different foods that she tested. FORTY TWO. Pretty much everything I eat, I’m allergic to. I mean, for the love. Apparently all I can eat are sardines on a bed of lettuce topped with sesame seeds. Thank God I am not allergic to coffee or chocolate! Or fruit. (Meh.) Eggs, wheat, all dairy of any kind except oat milk (!), peanuts, seafood, rice, beans, soy, gluten, rye, zucchini…out. All out. I mean for real. Am I supposed to survive on fruit alone? The only kind of meat I can tolerate eating because of my Almost Vegetarian status is turkey. Guess what! Allergic! What!?! And if I can’t have nuts, legumes, beans, soy…how am I going to get my protein?

*sigh*

I’m a hot mess. Just when I think I have my crazy body figured out, I discover some other insanity I have to adapt to.

I admit, I had a meltdown. I was so overwhelmed. Half of the foods in the world I can’t eat because I have been on a diet to try to decrease inflammation and lose weight, and the other half I’m apparently allergic to.

I’ll just be over here, nibbling on my cucumber with a side of onion.

I had a pity party for a bit. I’m tired of rolling with what my body throws at me. It’s exhausting. And I’m mad at it. I’ve tried very hard to be all healing and zen and supportive and intuitive and trusting of my body, but sometimes I just feel mad. I’m sick of having to fight to discover and treat all my ailments.

And now I can’t have peanut butter. Stupid body.

After my pity party, I realized I have a system: recognize new information, let it sink in, feel all the feels, move forward. So many times I believe I should handle everything with immediate grace and dignity or I am a faulty human.

Not true.

Being human is embracing all the messy, ugly, hard, beautiful, magical things about our lives and just living the experience. There is no such thing as a faulty human. We were designed to live a messy life. That’s just the way it is. When I’m in the middle of a giant pity party because I can’t eat peanut butter and peanut butter reminds me of Gabriel and the childhood I can never revisit because the Central African Republic is war-torn and dangerous, it’s messy. And that's ok. There is no perfect, clean box that our emotions and experiences need to fit in. It’s ok if our frustration and disappointment and joy are bigger than our box. It’s ok for emotions to bleed out. That’s what it means to be human.

Humanity is messy and raw and insane and astonishingly precious.

When I find out something novel about this wild body I live in, I eventually get to the point where I can say “Hmm, thank you for teaching me something new.” I eventually get past the pity party and the messy feels and figure out how to integrate the new challenge and adapt to it to make life healthier and more enjoyable. But the pity party phase is my processing tool, and that’s ok. It’s part of being human.

I’ve come to realize that I can still hold the memories of Wilburina and Gabriel’s perfect peanut butter close to my heart even if I can’t eat meat or peanuts. Those memories do not equal food; those memories equal love. Just because I can't eat certain things does not diminish my feelings about those cherished memories.

Here’s to the mess of being human. To the journey life takes us on that we never saw coming. To the pity parties and the challenges and the memories. Feel all the feels, friends. It’s part of being a human.

Isn't humanity spectacular and strange?

xoxo