I have a (WEIRD) allergy.

It’s true. It’s something that I’ve battled against since I was a little kid, before I knew that I should question what kind of wacky things my body was capable of. You know, the days when scabs were still cool, and comparing injuries to your friends was a way to pass the time?

Here’s a weird thing to say:

I am allergic to GARLIC.

 I’ll give you a second to let the vampire jokes come rolling in before I continue.

I’ve been dealing with this for years, if you couldn’t already tell.

As weird as it sounds, garlic allergies are absolutely despicable. And it’s not something that say, can be cured by eating more garlic and developing an immunity against it. (I would know—I’ve tried.)

It has varied over the years, but basically, I eat ANYTHING with garlic, and my body just decides it’s going to be a giant jerk, and erm… enthusiastically evacuates everything I’ve eaten that day. Everything. Nothing is safe from the wrath of garlic allergy fallout. Then I get what my fiancé affectionately refers to as “temptation blemishes,” which is just his way of telling me that I ate something I shouldn’t have eaten because now I’m covered in hives.

That’s nothing though. My lips, tongue and throat used to swell up when I ate it. I guess I should be glad I’m only getting hives and… other symptoms now.

And yes, sometimes I just decide I’m going to wreck my body later for the sake of having savory delicious foods now.

What can I say? Sometimes bad decisions are a sure thing when you’re hungry.

“Garlic is a weird allergy to have,” you say, “But I haven’t heard of it, so it probably isn’t that big of an issue.”

For one, I’d like to give you this face:

For two, I’d like to thank you for shutting up with all of that mess, because you need to take a look at something really near and dear to me: the ingredients list on the back of any food of your choice.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Whatcha got? Chips? Hummus? Pretzels? Meat? Chicken salad? Coleslaw? Lasagna? Hot dogs? Chances are it has garlic in it. Go ahead and peruse the shelves of your grocery store next time you go. Four out of five items that you look at on the shelves with have garlic listed somewhere in them. Imagine trying to order pizza. Chinese. Japanese. Vietnamese. Indian. Thai. Arabic. German. Italian’s out completely. BBQ? No way.

I will get random outbreaks of garlic allergy whenever I eat it. Now, imagine dealing with that everyday of your life. It’s really not fun, and my outbreaks can vary in severity according to how much I ate and even how it was in the food. Dried, powdered, chopped up into bits? Sometimes just smelling it can give me a headache and make me nauseous.

 Just looking at this picture makes me all kindsa queasy.

Regardless of however bizarre, it actually is a real issue with lots of people. To this day, I have ever only met one other person with a garlic allergy in real life. I read about lots of others on the Internet, so they must be real, right?

Anyone else have a weird allergy?

I’ll still say that a garlic allergy is harder to avoid than your typical shellfish/peanuts/lactose intolerances any day.

And I’d be right too. ‘Cause now it’s on the Internet. It must be true.