I am that person now.

I’m that girl you invite to dinner, but question whether she’s that interesting enough to make this endeavor worthwhile. You know, the person who you start exerting effort over the stove for and then think, fuck, fuck, fuck in the middle of roasting a giant cheese and breadcrumb stuffed leg of lamb because you remembered that they can eat neither lamb nor cheese nor bread nor giant things nor, for that matter, cooked food.

You know, the kind of person whose diet prevents them from eating anything except, perhaps, a single carrot that grew in a sterilized vacuum, free from the influence of microbes, pesticides, and controversial opinions about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Carrot lightly spritz with salt water, please.

I’m that person now. Don’t invite me to dinner, because I wouldn’t want to invite my food sensitive ass either. Besides, I won’t be listening to you. I’ll just be looping a montage of the Cheetos, fried chicken, and beer I can no longer consume – like a gastronomic In Memoriam set to the painful, yearning melody of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”.

You may call it dietary restrictions or “gluten sensitivity”. I just call it nihilistic dietary sadness.

—

Some people forget who they are amid tragic circumstances like war or natural disaster. Such circumstances reveal the fragility of being human – that, free of societal comfort and constraint, we sway dangerously between savagery and humanity.

My experience of near-humanistic loss was not in a war zone or amid scorched earth. I wasn’t imperiled by flood rains or famine. I was in the exceptionally well-lit frozen food section at Whole Foods.

There I stood, amid dozens of other young professionals with pansy ass nutritional preferences, choosing between the infinite number of frozen pizza options. I had narrowed it down to 2 products – an organic version of the Tostino’s Pizza Roll¹ and an item that purported to be a gluten-free, dairy free pizza.

As I held the glass door of the freezer ajar, I felt the physical whoosh of circulated, refrigerated air hit my face and the psychological gust of question after question:

Who am I?

Who is Jen?

Is this Jen now?

Is Jen me?

Is this me?

—

The Jen of yore is a chubby kid whose childhood diet was almost exclusively Vietnamese. By virtue of the cuisine, I defaulted on a life that was gluten-free – rice noodles, rice dishes, rice-wine vinegar, rice paper.

When you raise children with little money, the strategy is to bribe your brood with cheap, empty things. My brilliant parents withheld what they considered “American food” unless I gave them what they wanted – Arby’s for A’s, Egg McMuffins for exemplary handwriting, curly fries for a clean room. Gluten became an elusive privilege.

Like a fat Pavlovian dog, I associate the thick, greasy air surrounding a Jack-In-The-Box with nostalgia and American success. Today, nothing feels more satisfying than eating a Sourdough Jack with a side of chili cheese curly fries.²

Do you think the child in me cared about multiplication tables or knowledge or the inherent goodness that is learning for the sake of learning? NOPE. Just give me the McNuggets and don’t you dare forget the sweet and sour sauce.

In gluten, I see the hunger of youth – the luminous energy of a girl who could write a story in one-night, run to the local campus pub, and down an entire pitcher of Blue Moon. I taste the countless bagels I ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner – a decision born of collegiate poverty and caring not of body, but of creating, writing, and imaging.

And I remember the people all around me who devoured the same glutinous, gluttonous shit with me. The companions who stared into a dark midnight sky with me, dreaming of a day we would drink better than Keystone Light. The dirty café on Wisconsin Avenue that served the best 3 AM french fries with friends. The pizza shop on Haight Street that always rectified a disappointing Friday with slices covered in whole gloves of garlic. All the people I texted reminding them that it was Two-Dollar Thigh Tuesday at Popeye’s.

That’s who I am.

—

I’m also the girl who, months ago, went to my fourth doctor in 10 years to resolve long-standing skin issues. For much of my life, I have itched, scratched, and itched, resulting in cycle so tumultuous that it would jolt me awake in my sleep. It became so entrenched in my sleeping habits that my partner learned to unconsciously scream No! No! No! and slap my hand away if she heard scratching in her sleep.

Anyone who has had an itch that never goes away knows that the sensation becomes both a physical and emotional irritation. The most infuriating part of insatiable itching was that I could never figure out why the urge existed. It became a part of me.

Through 20 years and a half-dozen doctors, I never had a diagnosis – only conjectures that blamed my dogs, Houston (the entire city, its polluted airspace and its climate), San Francisco (the entire city, its cold airspace, and its weird ass people), dryer sheets (???), and a confounding, physiologically-impossible claim that I had chlamydia³ (which ended up a false positive, thank you STD Jesus).

Dog-less, dryer sheet-less, and STD-less, I still itched. The more I itched, the less I slept, the less I felt like myself. Hazy-eyed, mildly desperate, and on the suggestion of doctor number 4, I did something that I never thought Jen would do. I went on an elimination diet. Out went the bread, then the pasta, then those delicious Red Lobster cheddar bacon biscuits, and then, worst of all, the beer.

“I can’t imagine you without a beer,” said my friend after inviting me, to all places, a brewery towards the finale of my elimination nightmare. I hate my life, I thought as I drank the only thing I could: non-alcoholic kombucha.⁴

There went most of the carbs – donuts, cookies, French bread – I consumed burning my candle at both ends in a dreamy, ardent desire to write. There went the dream of one day living an Asian version of the King of the Hill opening credits. And there, on the other side, went the itching.

Like a phoenix that cannot be feathered, dredged in breadcrumbs, and deep fried – I rose, a new gluten-free me.⁵

—

I’m that person now. I hope you’ll still invite me to dinner.⁶

1. This box had 11 pizza rolls in it. Who puts 11 of anything in a box? Why can’t you make it 10? Or, give me an extra roll by making it 12 – especially if you’re charging me 8 dollars.
2. “We don’t have chili cheese curly fries here,” said the San Francisco Jack-in-the-Box drive-thru woman condescendingly.
3. Shout out to my college student health services for that one.
4. FML.
5. I’m pretty sure that’s a direct quote from Maya Angelou.
6. That gluten-free, dairy-free frozen pizza was fucking awful, by the way.