Food. It's not like I have a ''problem'' with it, but it has a problem with me. It taunts me, stares, and distracts my everyday decision. It controls my 'for you page' on Tik Tok, my explore feed on Instagram, and most of my saved photos on Google photos- it never ends. 

I can't go one minute without the irresistible smell that is every food I CAN'T eat. Yes, that's right, I cannot eat. Food allergies are the bane of my existence, specifically eggs, and dairy. One minute, I am eating a food I thought for sure did not have dairy and eggs, and the next minute, I am nauseous, spinning, and foaming at the mouth at the train station, waiting for the bathroom or the tracks to clear so I can throw up. 

I wish I were lactose intolerant and just got queasy at the sight of eggs, but sadly I am not. I am one of the few people in the world with a milk and egg allergy that causes me to throw up and feel ashamed. While the rest of the world, nay society, gets constipation and the fear of shitting their pants when consuming milk, I get the unsolicited advice from churchgoers that preach I am 'God's strongest solider.' The same churchgoers who mindlessly forget what the real satanic curse is in the world- allergies.

Constipation- a word I never thought I would want, but one good look at tres leches, cheesecake, croissants, elotes, and I'm back to wanting to be those people who scream at their toilets and plead Not again, please spare me.... As they clench their toilet paper holders and pray to any god they find merciful. Yet, at the same time, they are flushing their last shred of dignity down the drain as they blast their digestive tract to the ocean and the moon. Still, I am envious.

I am green with envy, yellow with curiosity, and saddened with blue. Blue wants to try every food place that comes on my Tik Tok 'For you page,'

but looking at the menu and seeing what it's prepared near or in,  I can't any take chances. Yellow is the last shred of dignity I carved within my soul when saving yet another food place, knowing all good and well that place won't ever reach me, nor will I ever reach it. And Green... Green is the ugly part of me that says, let's risk it all and see how far we can take it, knowing the last time I did that, I got sick so bad that I could not distinguish myself from the throw-up. That was the biggest threat imaginable-me.

But can we really blame me when food is so delicious and elusive? It's modern-day harassment for food to have that engorging smell around me. It begets my attention like a siren and is just as toxic as one. It would be one thing if the intangible food I love were not everywhere, and if it experienced the stigma of cancel culture so I would never have to see it again. But, instead, it's the common candidate everywhere, elected by every store and bakery alike. It's toxic, loving, hateful, and amazing all in one.

Food and I used to be best friends, more than best friends, 'besties for the resties,' we would say when I got tres leches for my birthdays, croissants for special tests, and cheesecake on special occasions. I always loved food more than food loved me, which was the problem. As the old saying goes, people grow apart, and at the beginning of the ninth grade, I began to see food cast an ugly shadow against me as I could no longer eat eggs. I choked and grasped at my throat as it swelled up. I tried clutching for air and signing for help, and once I got the egg out and took some medicine, I felt safe again. After that, my relationship with food turned for the worst; we were best friends and then frenemies.

Although we are enemies now, I am like the ex who stalks their past significant other's social media. I can't get enough of it. So I plead, try, and beg for food to forgive me, knowing full well that I am not in the wrong, nor is food in the right. Food used to fulfill me and acknowledge my existence, but now it pits me to out to be needy, ungrateful, and selfish. 

But I can't stop looking at food. I am forever in the shackles it has placed, alone and encompassing the burden it has full knowledge of doing to me. It's unconscious at this point. So at any given moment in time, I am looking for a new food place, a place where food and I can rekindle our friendship - a place for neutrality. But, instead of neutrality, I often get a heated roadblock, speed bump, or a deer in the road as food will never respect me, nor am I truly willing to forgive it. It's crippling and an endemic the sorrowful island of me has to deal with constantly.

When I stare down at my phone, glaring at the corner of my screen, I ask myself if I am at the point of healing. The point where I can recognize it's not just breaking me but that it's mocking me. It's an internal scream filled with pity, distaste, and constantly forced veganism. Unfortunately, this ongoing scream will never get as much recognition as the famous painting or the 1996 movie. There is no record of allergen 'Hall of Famers', but if you ask me, food would be at the very top of the list. 

I wish food were like the incessant head scratch that, although it causes more itches, is so self-satisfying that you can't stop. But food isn't. Food is more like chickenpox- a disease so ugly in itself, where if you scatch it, you scar. And that's exactly what food is, a scar—a forever-pigmented wound between my soul and body.

The heart wants what it wants, but when I said that to my doctor, she laughed at the implication because she knew what food had done to me. Food burned bridges, mentalities, and realities for me all in the span of a couple of years.

         So I say this not to damage the representation of food but to reflect upon the damaging things it has done to me. And notice how easy it is to be in a cult of toxicity with the thing you love most. It's easy to say leave and don't go back, but when it becomes a habit of loving food, nay an obsession, it's hard to imagine life without it. I know food will never be as kind as it once was or be applicable to my daily struggles, but to click block on every media of food and deny myself the visual beauty of every bakery is a coping mechanism I refuse to have. 

It's the devil's tango, a sinful error, and a thread I am carefully walking on, and an escape is far out of my future. There are two ways in which this can end, clawing my way out or killing my immune system. It's a sad story and one in which I will forever choose...( DOT, DOT, DOT).