Room TemperatureFriday
The Part Nobody Puts in the Pamphlet
Nobody puts the blue part in the pamphlet. So here it is, and here’s where it goes.
I cut gluten six years ago, and there’s a part of it I have never once seen written down anywhere.
It isn’t the labels or the swaps or any of the practical business. It’s the blue days. The ones where the whole thing sits on your chest and you are completely certain nobody on earth gets it.
I’m going to tell you where this is headed before I tell you anything else, because I remember badly needing somebody to just say it out loud. It does not stay this heavy. I’m six years in, writing to you from the far side of the worst of it, and it does not stay this heavy.
Here’s what I think makes the beginning so brutal.
Choosing to go gluten-free is one thing. Having your body choose for you, with no warning and no conversation, is something else entirely. It shows up like a sneak attack. One day you’re a person who eats, and the next you’re a person who manages. Nobody sat me down. Nothing got explained. I got hit by the truck and then everyone seemed to expect me to stand up and be normal about it.
And the thing that got me wasn’t the big dramatic stuff. (It never is, is it?) It was the ordinary things.
I couldn’t go and grab an ice cream anymore. That’s the whole loss. Written down it looks like nothing, and I know that. But I’d have a rough afternoon and the fix used to be walking somewhere and buying one, and then one day the fix was simply gone. Breakfast at a cafe, the kind where you get something warm with a hot chocolate beside it and sit there for an hour doing absolutely nothing. Gone too. All the small, unremarkable, movie version things I’d assumed would just keep on being available to me.
So if you’re sitting there sad about something that small, my friend, you aren’t being ridiculous. I promise you it isn’t small.
From the Recipe BoxVanilla Chocolate Chip Ice CreamSee the Recipe →
And then there’s the part nobody prepares you for at all, which is that everybody else gets to just be. They walk into the corner store and pick something up. They get popcorn at the theater without a single thought passing through their head. They’re not doing anything clever! They’re just existing. Existing is the thing that stopped being free for you.
The social side goes the same way, because going out and eating is practically written into us. Nobody hangs out without food in it somewhere. That’s what going out is. So you start restructuring. You cater your own picnic. You pack food for the road like you’re relocating. You eat before you arrive so nobody has to accommodate you.
Every one of those is a sensible adjustment. All of them stacked on top of each other is exhausting.
I turned into a homebody without ever deciding to. It happened over a couple of years, the way you don’t notice a room getting dark. I stopped going places, and the official reason was always something else, an early start, a long week, and the real reason was that staying in was easier than doing the arithmetic one more time.
Underneath all of it sits the thing that keeps you on edge, which is that gluten hides. It turns up in places it has no business being. You can read the label, ask the question, do every single thing right, and still be wrong. So somebody hands you a plate they made specially, because they were thinking of you, and what you feel is fear where gratitude ought to be. You say thank you and you’re already running the list in your head.
That’s a strange way to feel about food, which used to be the fun part.
There’s an image I keep coming back to for all of this, so I’ll just hand it to you.
You feel like a dirty dish in a sink. Sitting there. Nobody coming for it.
I believed that for a very long time. I was wrong about it, and the proof is that I’m the one writing to you right now.
Because here’s what I actually want you to hear. You’re still here. Still reading things like this, still working at it, still pushing. That isn’t nothing. Plenty of people get handed something like this and go under, and here you are, in the water, still swimming. I’m not saying that to be kind to you. It’s just the evidence.
It does get easier, too, and I don’t mean that the way people say it when they’re trying to cheer you up. What actually happens is that the arithmetic gets faster. The decisions stop being decisions. You build new ordinary things to stand where the old ones were, and then one day you catch yourself realizing you haven’t thought about any of it all week.
The other thing I’ll say is that the emotional side of this is half the job, and almost nobody treats it that way.
There’s no shortage of information out there. Lists, safe brands, what to ask a waiter. All useful, and I write some of it myself. But where’s the writing about feeling left behind by your own life? About being sad over an ice cream cone and then feeling silly for being sad over an ice cream cone? That’s the part that actually takes people down, and it’s the part nobody’s handing out help for.
When I started, I had none of it. I worked it out alone and slowly, and I’d rather you didn’t have to.
So this is the thing I wish somebody had written for me. I’m writing it for me as well, if I’m honest, because I’ll be back down here one of these days and I’d like something to read when I am.
If you recognized yourself anywhere in this, you are nowhere near alone. There are so many of us feeling exactly this. We just don’t say it out loud.
So say it to me. I’ll say it right back.
One More Thing!
What gets you through the blue days? Something you do, something you make, something somebody said to you once that stuck.
Write to me. I want to put them together, because the next person is going to need them.
Thanks for reading, and see you next Friday.
Write to me at hello@brimly.co. Past issues are archived here.
Stephnie Grace is a recipe developer, editor, and co-founder of Brimly, specializing in gluten-free, soy-free, and gum-free baking. She writes Room Temperature, a Friday letter from behind the scenes at Brimly, for anyone who is new to gluten-free and not sure where to start.
