My go-to “never have I ever” is that I’ve never had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. My mom’s favorite part of Halloween was when my brothers and I gave her all of our poisonous, nut-filled candy from trick-or-treating. Being allergic to nuts really cut our haul in half, but at least she could reap the benefits of our allergies. Neither of my parents are allergic to nuts, so I don’t know why two out of three of my older brothers and I are. I did read somewhere though that stress during a pregnancy can induce allergies in the child, so since it wasn’t genetically given to me, I blame my dad for stressing my mom out.

My allergy isn’t that big of a deal. I mean, yeah, my throat will close up if I eat nuts and I might need a shitload of Benadryl and an Epi-Pen, but it’s no big deal. After being allergic to something for all your life, you get the hang of how to work around it. You start cutting corners and bending the rules a little. For example, when the ingredients in a milk chocolate bar reads “may contain tree nuts,” you learn that it doesn’t actually mean it contains nuts, but that it was manufactured in a place that contains nuts. So I eat it anyway. My friends will yell at me and tell me not to eat it, though, because they’re way more cautious of what I put in my body than I am. It’s like they care if I have a near-death experience or something, I don’t know. One time I tried to grab a cookie out of my friend’s bag and she smacked it out of my hand. At first I thought she was being a fat ass and didn’t want to share her food, but actually, she thought there were nuts in the cookie and was protecting me.

I guess I sound like an asshole when I say this, but it really bothers me when people are extra aware of my nut allergy. I hate drawing attention to it, and I hate it when I get asked a million questions about it. “So, if you eat this nut, will you die?” “You’ve never had a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup before?” “You’re allergic to all nuts? Can you eat peanuts?” “My cousin gets hives when she eats nuts, what happens to you?” “Is it air-borne?” “Do you carry an Epi-Pen with you?” “If you make-out with someone after they eat nuts, will you get an allergic reaction?” I actually don’t know about that last question, and I’m too scared to try it out.

A lot of people who have this allergy aren’t as lucky as I am. Like my brother. I think it was our first night in Amsterdam when he ate something at a fancy restaurant that had walnuts in it by accident. His face turned grey, his lips purpled, and his throat began to close. We rushed him to the hospital in a cab, and after what seemed like hours of waiting, he was cleared to go back to the hotel. I like to joke around that my brother is stupid, because he gets attacks much more frequently than I do, but it’s just that his allergy is more severe than mine is. I can’t really blame my friends for being protective of me, since that’s what they probably expect to happen. In reality, though, my lips will get a little itchy, and then I’ll pop a Benadryl (my drug of choice) and pass out. This got me out of school tons of times when I was little. Sometimes I’d fake an allergy attack so that the nurse would let me sleep in her room while my classmates ran sprints in gym class.

You know when you smell gasoline and you secretly like it, even though you know you’re not supposed to? That’s the way I feel about peanut butter. Only peanut butter, though. Walnuts scare the shit out of me. It’s something about the way they’re shaped that intimidates me. It also probably has to do with the fact that I’m most allergic to them and cashews. I respect nuts. I don’t hate them, and I don’t hate myself for not being able to digest them properly. I do kind of hate when my grandma grabs a handful of cashews (my enemy) and noshes on them before giving me a kiss and hugging me with her nut-infested hands, though.

Aside from being threatened by a common food, I don’t really mind being allergic to nuts. It kind of gives me an edge. People feel sorry that I can’t have peanut butter sandwiches for lunch, but I feel sorry that they think the alternative cream cheese and jelly option is gross. Cream cheese to me is what peanut butter is to most people, and I even eat it plain sometimes (a lot of times). No, I’ve never had a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup before, and I can’t eat peanut butter-stuffed pretzels, but that doesn’t mean I wish I could. Does Superman wish he wasn’t allergic to Kryptonite? Well, probably. That’s a bad example. But what I’m trying to get across is that I can’t long for what I don’t know, so don’t feel bad for me just because I can’t have a bite of your poisonous candy.