1. Having to explain what you can and can’t eat to literally everyone.
2. Hanging out with a group of friends and having to watch them eat pizza.
3. Or Chinese food.
4. Or basically anything that tastes good that you can’t eat.
5. And you have to provide your own snacks whilst you watch everyone else eat the good stuff.
6. Being the party pooper that can’t have a piece of birthday cake.
7. At least there’s wine.
8. Having to bring your own everything to a family gathering whilst trying your best not to offend your relatives and their best pasta bake.
9. Going out to restaurants and grilling the poor waiter about the ‘safe foods’ on the menu.
10. Then lecturing them on how you need it prepared with as little chance of cross-contamination as possible.
11. Yet they still serve your gluten-free meal with bread.
12. Also knowing that when said waiter finishes their shift, they WILL be plotting your death.
13. Getting majorly aggravated when restaurants change a recipe and you can no longer eat it as a result.
14. Or when your number of choices on a menu goes down quicker than a shot of tequila.
15. Shopping at Whole Foods and watching people buy boxes of brownies because they’re gluten-free and therefore will make for perfect weight loss food.
16. Having people sneer at you thinking that you are also one of those people.
17. Having the occasional ‘why me?’ meltdown, wondering how bread could play you like that.
18. Walking past a Krispy Kreme stand and thinking about how you really didn’t appreciate the time you had together and that you shouldn’t take donuts for granted.
19. Paying twice the price for basic food stuffs.
20. And having to pay double for parking because it takes so much longer to shop because of inspecting every list of ingredients.
21. When withdrawal gets too much and you're convinced that the food is trying to seduce you.
22. So you try to justify suffering for 24 hours.
23. All in the name of a greasy, cheesy, gluten-y, allergen-filled chimichanga.
24. Binge drinking corn-distilled vodka because you’re totally responsible and committed to a gluten-free life.
25. And then the next day, having to stick with just a greasy hash brown from the Drive-Thru when a double sausage and egg McMuffin is the only thing that can truly save you.
26. That feeling of genuine excitement when you look at the ingredients and find out something that you’ve always loved is [insert allergen here]-free.
27. And then having all dreams dashed by the dreaded label: ‘may contain traces of’.
