On traveling, leaving my bubble, and peanut allergies
To give some context before I get into the meat and potatoes of this post:
- I was born and raised in New York City
- I am 23
- I was born with a severe peanut allergy (I cannot smell peanuts without going into anaphylactic shock and being taken to the hospital after using my EpiPen)
- I am from a 100% Nuyorican household
- I had never left the country except to go to Puerto Rico to visit family members.
Growing up in NYC means a lot of things: from a young age you are ingrained with good instinct (how to stay safe at night, how to stay out of trouble, how to maneuver around the city, how to recognize a scam), you are taught that the world is a beautiful melting pot of cultures, humans of different backgrounds, you learn the value in different talents, art, points of view, you learn respect. How can you not learn these things when you’re surrounded by descendants of immigrants, the biggest mix of humans you could ever imagine? Within a five block radius of your house you can get Thai food, Polish, Egyptian, African, Indian, Cuban, Puerto Rican, anything you could possibly imagine- and fusions of that all.
Being from a Latino household you learn a lot of other things: love your culture, your family, relish in the color that you bring to life, shine as brightly as you can and never stop because your family will always be there to support you.
When I moved to Portland, OR to go to school, I was slapped in the face by a new reality: not everyone gets that same perspective, exposure, that I had taken for granted for so long. If you don’t know anything about Portland, you should look it up, it’s a pretty great place- but what you need to know for the purposes of this post is that Portland, OR is the whitest big city in America. If I’m not mistaken, it is 72% white people- and that number is growing. A lot of these people are progressive, forward minded, well meaning, but often exposed to very little in terms of other cultures. It was unnerving to be so acutely aware of all the stares I was getting the minute I stepped foot of the airplane for the first time- and this was before I ended up with a ton of tattoos. Over the years I began to realize that this lack of exposure created a bubble for these people, that they didn’t realize they were in because, “I have black friends”- where a well intentioned question “but, aren’t you Mexican?” illustrated the level of isolation that has overtaken the city.
I would put my nose in the air, secretly, and think to myself how fortunate I must be to be able to boast my colorful, cultureful background. After all, I had been exposed to so many different people, behaviors, customs, mannerisms, religions since birth- obviously I had the most perspective out of my peers. But I realized something, my uppity attitude, my… “respectful disdain” for the bubble that my white friends lived in created my own bubble, a slightly larger one that left me stuck. Sure, I had the benefit of seeing, loving, and learning from things different than my own- but all I had really seen was what New York had turned those things into. Even my own culture- one that I proudly wear on my sleeve- is only a permutation of my ancestry. I know virtually nothing of Puerto Rican culture as it is lived by my grandfather and distant cousins who actually live on the island. What I know is my Nuyorican culture as it had developed from my grandparents and their siblings after coming to America and settling. (No, it’s not quite like West Side Story portrays it.)
This realization fueled my fire to break out of my unknowingly self-constructed bubble. I needed a larger perspective, but more than anything, I needed to break out of the every day deprivation of my own people that had begun to dampen my flame.
It’s not something you realize until you end up in a place where no one is the same as you; you don’t think of even the small things as being a product of your environment, but being one of three Puerto Ricans in the state of Oregon (only a hair of exaggeration in that statement) made it abundantly clear to me that, although I had rebelled against my culture as a teenager, it had found its way into my life anyway. From certain sayings, to missing food stuffs, to how we celebrated Christmas, and even just skin color- being the only caramel colored person in a room almost everywhere you go…. It begins to take its toll and your different-ness begins to consume you.
I realized that in order to really become the best version of myself, to say that I truly valued, accepted, and celebrated difference, I needed to get out of the damn country.
And that’s how on one random Saturday afternoon in March, in the middle of my shift at work I decided to go to China. Most impulsive thing I’ve done in my life- including getting most of my tattoos ;). I had no real plan, no idea how I would pay for it, no idea where I would stay, no idea what my boyfriend would say, and no clue how to stay alive. But I didn’t care, I speak functional Mandarin and had six months to figure the rest out. So I walked up to my best friend as he sat in our break room and said, “let’s go to China.”
And just like that, we were going on the adventure of a lifetime.
Now, let’s back track a little here.
At the beginning of this post I mentioned that I have a severe peanut allergy. Again, I was born with it. For as long as I remember I’ve had to talk to adults about how to keep me safe, I’ve had sixteen severe reactions in my life- all were near-death experiences, and only a few were my own fault for not being careful enough. And, keep in mind, this was before severe allergies really became prevalent in America- before even labeling laws became more strict. I’ve been turned away from restaurants because the liability is too much. I’ve been isolated and belittled by adults who didn’t understand or didn’t believe that an allergy could be as severe as mine was. In some ways they were also well-meaning, but the messages that I heard growing up in that environment were that I could not be a functional human being. It would always be too dangerous. I should try and live in a bubble because I couldn’t REALLY expect anyone to make even small accommodations for my allergies. When I’d go on overnight field trips with my school, I’d walk around with a little pamphlet of information that my mother had put together- no joke- to help the adults (and in turn, other children) understand that this was literally my life that they were needing to be cautious with. And even still, they would laugh.
I remember one time, in junior year of high school, I went on a week long road trip with a program to tour some east coast colleges. My mother and I had prepared beforehand as best we could- talked to the chaperones, packed safe foods, prepared my medic alert bracelet, pamphlet, and talked about safety procedures. One thing that the chaperones had agreed to was asking the kids to not eat any peanuts on the bus- when we were off the bus, they could do whatever they wanted, but because my allergy was so severe, in an enclosed space eating peanuts would surely send me into anaphylactic shock.
Finally the trip started and the chaperones explained to the kids that peanuts were banned from the bus because it could kill me, but you could tell that they were skeptical about how true that was, and because I could tell, I knew the others could tell too. It took two days before someone broke the rule. I didn’t even realize it before my throat started to close up and I passed out on the bus just after having administered my EpiPen. I was stranded with one of the chaperones on a random highway in Indiana, dying, waiting for an ambulance to come and hook me up to steroids. I was in the hospital for six hours before we hopped a taxi to Illinois to catch up with the rest of the group.
If I wasn’t being told I was exaggerating my “intolerance”, I was being told my life wasn’t worth people making small sacrifices for a few hours, or, I was being told that the “real world” was too dangerous for me to live in.
For a while I believed that. They really had me fooled. Until my school started to offer Mandarin as a foreign language. I took year one and excelled. I’m very skilled with language learning, and Mandarin was no exception. After completing year one with excellent grades and a newfound passion for Chinese, I found that my school was offering a special opportunity for kids who showed a talent for the language to travel to China (Beijing and Shanghai- not even rural towns) for a month to study. Of course, I wanted to go. It didn’t even occur to me that my allergy would be an issue, but as I put things into place- as I always did- I was slammed with the bad news.
“We will not allow you to go on this trip because it’s too dangerous with your allergy,” said my principal.
“That doesn’t make any sense, I can pack my own food, not all Chinese cuisine uses nuts, and I can speak the language well enough to stay safe,” I replied.
“We still will not allow you to go,” she said.
“My mother is willing to pay for a nurse to come with me and keep me safe, this doesn’t make sense why won’t you let me go,?” This was true, my family didn’t have much extra money, but my mom was so taken aback by this that she was willing to spend however much it took to get a nurse out there with me.
“This isn’t up for discussion.” And with that, my dreams were crushed.
These experiences made my trip to China even more terrifying and impulsive. I had spent so long thinking, “I can’t do this, I’m going to die, I can’t survive in that country of all countries. I can’t,” that the thought “I can” was one of the greatest moments of personal growth that I have experienced as a young adult.
Screw all of those people who said that I couldn’t do it. I speak Mandarin well enough to talk about my food allergy, if I had to, I’d live on instant oatmeal for the three weeks that I would be there. I didn’t care. I wanted to pop my bubble, I wanted to see the world, I wanted adventure, I wanted my fire to burn once again.
I’m writing this blog post on a bus in Hong Kong, driving up to see a big ass Buddha on a damn mountain with my best friend sitting in front of me, hungrily taking pictures of the beauty that is this island.
I’m on day ten of this trip, and I’m still healthy, still alive, and living the adventure that I was told I could never survive.
This trip has taught me so many things and I’ll list them here for you.
1. My Mandarin is far better than I ever thought it was.
2. Beijing (not so much Hong Kong) is a surprisingly peanut allergy friendly city
3. The world is just as beautiful and different as I thought it would be
And most importantly
4. I will work as hard as I can to never let my hubris, my arrogance, limit me and keep me from the adventures I deserve to have- and, more so, that my peanut allergy is not a shackle, it’s not a mountain, it’s not a jail cell- it’s a speed bump. A damn speed bump in the road of my life.
To all of my peanut allergic peers, and to anyone who thinks that they can’t- don’t you dare let anyone tell you that you don’t deserve all of the adventures you want in life. Don’t allow yourself to look back and regret never taking a leap of faith.
Do it. Do it safely. Do it smart. But
Just. Fucking. Do. It.
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