I know I touched on issues with food already this week but I thought I’d go into a little more detail so those of you who don’t experience this difficulty can get a glimpse into what it’s like. Food is a massive problem for me; it’s a daily cause of stress. Where am I going to be? Will there be food I can eat? If not, can I bring my own food? Can I get away with not eating or will people notice and point it out? It’s a constant loop and that is exhausting.

As I said in a recent post, I’m incredibly sensitive to the flavour of food; add even the smallest sprinkling of pepper to a meal and I can’t eat it. It overwhelms me and I just cannot eat it. Forget spicy food entirely. So I can only eat the simplest things: plain rice or pasta, unadorned chicken or fish, and so on. I practically live on fruit and vegetables. When there are lots of different flavours, I get overloaded. I can’t describe it better than I did in my sensory sensitivity post: “It’s like throwing a load of different coloured paints together: you don’t see all the different colours, you just get one new colour and it often isn’t a nice one.”

I’m also very sensitive to texture; there are very few things that don’t trigger my gag reflex. I’m sure all of you have experienced that at one time or another so you can imagine how desperate I am to avoid it. I remember a particularly bad experience with tofu; I’m actually shuddering just thinking about it. I have a similar problem with wet foods touching dry foods. It triggers the same response. So while my family – who are all fairly adventurous when it comes to food, at least from my point of view – flip through a library of cookbooks, I eat simple meals with ingredients that I can separate and I eat them over and over again.

Honestly, I don’t mind that. It’s safe. It’s comforting. It’s the pressure to eat ‘like a normal person’ that’s stressful. Going to restaurants and eating in public is a major anxiety: it’s very rare that there’s something on the menu that I feel able to eat and asking for something simple feels impossible. I find asking for anything difficult and drawing attention to this issue is something I try to avoid if at all possible.

As a child, I was labelled a picky eater and strongly encouraged to try different food. I know that my family and friends were just trying to help me: they were trying to prepare me for a world that would expect me to eat complicated food. But instead of it getting easier, it got harder. So eventually we reached this uneasy stalemate. But getting a diagnosis made a massive difference: it gave people an explanation, made them realise that it was something I couldn’t help. It took the pressure off in a big way. But as important as that is, it hasn’t fixed my problems with food. And as much as I struggle with it physically and struggle to get the right nutrition, it also has a big impact on my mental health.

People make assumptions when they hear how little I can eat. They think I’m being picky or deliberately difficult and see me as an inconvenience. I know that it’s not my fault and that it’s a valid reason to struggle but I find it incredibly embarrassing that I can’t eat like everyone else. I feel like it keeps me from really becoming an adult, especially when so much socialising revolves around the consumption of food and drink. It feels like a weakness; it’s something I’m ashamed of, which definitely feeds into both my body image issues and my depression, as well as my anxiety. When I get really low, as in dangerously low, food becomes even harder and I just lose the will to eat all together.

I vividly remember being about ten years old and reading a magazine article about a girl who had to have intravenous nutrition for medical reasons and I found myself wishing I could have the same, wishing I could not eat because it would be so much easier. And I still relate to that. I would give anything to be in control of this, rather than it have control of me. I wish I could choose what to eat, rather than navigate around the things I can’t. I wish I could eat according to my beliefs instead of having to worry about whether I’m getting enough protein or calcium or whatever (I would love to be a vegan, or even a vegetarian, and often feel guilty that I’m not but health wise, it’s ill advised when there’s already so little that I can eat). I wish I didn’t have to be afraid of blowing a sensory fuse, of getting completely overloaded, which can trigger a meltdown. I wish I could enjoy food. But I can’t and I’m scared I never will.