Food allergies-mind over matter?
Each Friday night was the same. Go pick him up, wait outside the flat (he didn’t want the neighbours to know he was dating) and watch, while he would come down, out of the entrance to his flat and walk, almost smugly I would think, towards my car.
As we drove towards the restaurant, I couldn't help thinking that my problem was, I didn’t realise I was holding on to an allergy. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I always experienced it, particularly, on a Friday night. Perhaps I was bringing it on, inventing it, or imagining it, or perhaps it was real, but one thing was for sure, by the time we had eaten and driven to my home, I felt sick.
We normally used the same restaurant, with me always having the same thing to eat, salmon in a creamy sauce with pasta. This would be followed by decaf coffee topped with single pouring cream. Sometimes we would go for three courses instead of the usual two, which would involve ice cream and perhaps a little piece of chocolate cake.
The meals each week to the restaurants were making me feel normal, allowing me to be pampered, making me feel like a woman again, and at last I was dating a decent guy, who was happy to treat me nice and feed me real nice food. I was beginning to discover the best restaurants around, and experience the treatment of waiters and how they treated others. I watched with fascination each week until one lunch time we were in a very posh restaurant. I got up and walked towards what I thought might be the toilets. I asked a waiter "Where are the toilets please, and he replied "The BATHROOM Madam is round to the right". I was immediately aware that perhaps I wasn't dressed just quite as he would have expected for that type of restaurant and was trying to insult me. I replied "Interesting, I can have a bath as well then" and walked on feeling proud of myself for answering the little runt in an appropriate manner.
We continued to try other restaurants with a slight variation on the meal perhaps salmon and potatoes with vegetables followed with decaf coffee and pouring cream, it had the same effect. I would feel sick and head for the toilet usually before I left the restaurant or on my return home.
I was sure it was the salmon because often when I thought about salmon I would actually feel unwell (usually a good sign that something is wrong). However I continued to eat it, and I continued to feel sick, and I continued with my Friday evenings too.
As the weeks went into months and the months were about to become a year, it became evident that I really couldn’t keep on poisoning myself anymore. I stopped going to the flat to pick him up, and I didn’t get my Friday night meals anymore.
To this day, I still haven’t worked out, where the real problem lay, was it the salmon or was it the cream or was it just all, started in the mind before it reached the body?