After that March work trip, I didn't realize what was actually happening to me mentally. Truthfully, I didn't notice what it had really done until this summer when I started really breaking. As someone who has never dealt with anxiety, I was not conscious of the feelings I was experiencing until it was deep.
I started feeling like a burden to everyone and everything. I started to become very overwhelmed, overstimulated, and anxious. These were all feelings I had NEVER felt before so maybe that's why it took me so long to realize what was happening. I don't know.
I felt like I was holding people back from doing what they wanted, so I started avoiding convos around food and events. I just stopped seeing people. I stopped going out with friends. I stopped making plans. I stopped everything. I would only go out to celebrate a family member's birthday, and any time that happened, it was met with tears. Tears out of frustration, tears of sadness. Tears out of feeling left out, even though I was there, I still couldn’t participate. I have to prepare and pack my lunchbox and bring it everywhere we go. I have to pop tons of Benadryl to survive a hibachi night. Just the air in the restaurant will make me have an attack, skin crawling, mouth and throat feeling fuzzy, eventually start having trouble catching my breath, almost like I am suffocating. In these last 16 months, I can count on ONE hand the number of times I have gone to someone’s house to eat without needing to bring my own home-cooked food. It became a TOTAL mind F. (excuse my language).
My husband asked me if I thought people would be more understanding and accepting if I had a disease rather than allergies. 100% YES! Absolutely YES! Everyone thinks, just avoid the allergen. But, if you’ve read any of my other posts, you see how hard that is to do, based on the number of allergies I have and the particular ones that I have too. Especially if you don’t know where it’s hidden or what these synthetic ingredients actually mean. People don’t talk about the mindset of someone who walks around with allergies, the person who if not prepared, has to sit on the sidelines and watch people eat freely without a worry they will get sick, or for some, even die.
