Gemma-Rose Turnbull

Today I am tired. I am trying to pull it together because I (eternally) have a huge list of things to do, but moving my body thorough this day is like one of those dreams where you try to fly; desperate because there are ‘baddies’ on your tail, but your body is stuck, unresponsive and leaden. And its a poor excuse, tiredness. An implausible vagueness, an apathy. Even when you ramp it up and apply the labels of exhaustion or fatigue, its seems like a cop out. But this is my life, and has been for some time.

The most fist-clenchingly frustrating part is that last week, for a brief and delightful moment, I got a glimpse of my energetic self. I caught sight of the me I still see myself as, not this wasted, weary old person who is currently leasing my body (for not nearly as much as its worth). For the first time in a very long time all thought of drudgery was gone; My limbs were light, and I literally ran for miles, rejoicing in the unexpected energy. I wrote to a friend telling her how good I felt, how happy I was that I had my mojo back. And it WAS back! And then two late nights later and its gone, slunk away in the night, traitorously, with no return date confirmed.

And the most deeply, head-bangingly distressing, depressing thing? This vague and heavy fatigue is to do with food. More accurately its to do with the fact that for 30 years I blithely ate my fill of foods containing gluten and dairy. Both of which I now know I am allergic to. The cumulative effect of this happy noshing has been a slow erosion of all the goodness that keeps bodies fueled and ready to tackle life. Hence my collapse into total and utter exhaustion; a state complete with leaden limbs and low spirits. More than that it makes my brain dense and forgetful, my skin itch like the stings of a thousand buzzing mosquito’s, and my tummy perennially miserable. Sometimes it even strikes as a violent, and excruciatingly painful, cramping nausea that sees me slumped on the bathroom floor, doubled over and weeping.

It seems inconceivable to me that food, glorious food, could hurt me so badly. Particularly when in return I offer food nothing but adoration and love. I delight in its tastes, colours and textures; my mouth waters at the smell of the fresh baked bread, and the simple delight of cheese that is warmed to the perfect gooeyness. Also inconceivable is that those foods I so joyously partook of will never cross my lips again. How I am going to limp through the next 60-odd years of my life without them is slightly beyond my capacity to imagine. It seems perfectly plausible to give things up short-term, but forever seems like a big concept, more applicable to marriage than mozzarella.

I dined out with some buddies recently and faced with the limitations of ordering from a waiter who had promised gluten-free options when there actually were none on the menu I burst into tears. And although I write about crying quite often it is something I find horrifying to perform with an audience, usually reserving my tears for private or the most special of public occasions. But I couldn’t quell them in that moment facing the enormity of being that bloody annoying person who has to be picky at every dinner table, on every dinner out and in, for the rest of my life. Talk about til death do us part!

And while its a choice to be a label-reader, a waiter-quizzer, and a fuss-pot, I just can’t choose to live instead with weary-limbed fatigue, battling the mental fogginess and excruciating nausea. I don’t want to flake at the 9pm mark on nights out with my bemused friends who have seen me rapidly fade from a up-for-anything party girl, to a tired old woman. My brief reprieve tantalized me with the promise of energy; that my nights out dancing and giggling might be replacing comfortable socks and early-to-bed’s in a future that’s not too distant to imagine. I don’t image I will ever trash my body again, or take my health for granted, even if it mean a life of limited food choices, sensible eating and explaining myself, which is arguably the worst part. Because no matter how I frame it, its one of those things that prompts the old eye-roll more often than not. They’re easy symptoms to hide, only my family know what my pale face means, and no one is in the bathroom with me when I’m writhing in agony – and no words make that sound less than melodramatic – so you just don’t share it. Besides people get bored of excuses, and explanations are so tiring its easier not to bother (though I’m sure all my close friends are heartily sick of the words celiac and gluten by now).

Most of the people you come across with food allergies feel like frauds, one way or another. There’s a stigma attached, and unless your going to go into anaphylactic shock and die on the dining table you get lumped in with those soy-mocha-decaf-goji-chino folk that are the plague of your local cafe. The labels difficult and high-maintainence become stuck. And more worryingly your relationship with food becomes rather less, straightforward. In a sense it becomes the enemy; dangerous and debilitating. So while today is frustrating, fighting with tiredness, and the flatness that comes hand-in-hand with it, I know all my small, socially boring, steps are getting me out of this doughy hole I’ve made for myself (hopefully with my relationship to food somewhat intact). Which is just as well, because if I don’t resuscitate myself soon I might find myself alone in the wilderness of bland and boring, eating at the celiac table with only my other likewise afflicted mates for company!*

*This is an overdramatic recreation of events – my friends wouldn’t ditch me because I was more boring than John Howard, a man described aptly by the lovely Bill Bryson: “… John Howard is by far the dullest man in Australia. Imagine a very committed funeral home director – someone whose burning ambition from the age of eleven was to be a funeral home director, whose proudest achievement in adulthood was to be elected president of the Queanbeyan and District Funeral Home Directors association – then halve his personality and halve it again, and you have pretty well got John Howard …” . If, in the case I do become more boring than that I would extradite myself from their presence on moral grounds – no one deserves a friend that lacklustre.