1. First and foremost, you were trained to ALWAYS have an EpiPen at the ready...
2. ...And to keep plenty of Benadryl nearby for a backup.
3. When you were in school, you were never able to trade lunch with your friends.
4. Which sucked since you had to bring the same brown bag lunch every day filled with "safe" food.
5. You wanted to try the hot lunch at least once, even though you knew it would kill you.
6. And you stood by in horror as your mom explained your allergies to every teacher in front of the entire class.
7. She even forbade you from having snacks at your friend's house.
8. ...Let alone cake at their birthday parties.
9. On Halloween, you were only able to eat ¼ of your haul, which usually consisted of the worst candy.
10. And you were all too familiar with the occasional trip to the emergency room.
11. Hundreds of hours were lost at the grocery store carefully reading every single ingredient on labels.
12. You've made enemies with many servers in your lifetime because of the number of times you've had to send food back.
13. And you realized basically no restaurant knew how to cater to food allergies.
14. You can't even count the number of times someone suggested you should "just try a little" of some food that would kill you.
15. You've had to explain so many times that you’re not on some fad diet, you just literally cannot eat certain things.
16. And to this day you constantly have to reassure your parents you're capable of handling your allergy.
But rest assured that the world is slowly coming to its senses and finding ways to help you, instead of trying to kill you.
Yum.
