Many of my friends have allergies. I would always have trouble empathizing with them because my body has always been in really good condition. I have a really good immune system, and I get well really fast after getting sick. I could only say, “Aw man, that stinks!”
All I know about allergies is that they are the body’s reaction to a harmless pathogen as if it were a sickness. The body will reject random pathogens like pollen or shrimp for no reason. The reason people get runny noses and rashes is because the body is trying to send out antibodies to eliminate things that are harmless. When I learned about them in Bio, I thought, “Wow, allergies are so pointless and useless!” I suddenly felt bad for everyone who had them.
There were several points in my life where I said, “Hm. Sometimes I wish I actually had allergies so that I could empathize with all my friends. While they are being all sniffly, I am here just being perfectly fine.” I wanted to experience it with them.
At some point last year, I started getting the sniffles. I think I was actually sick at the time, since I was very fatigued and had a fever, but even after I felt slightly better, the sniffles and sneezing didn’t go away for a long time. They would go away whenever I traveled to a different place, but whenever I went home they would come back. I thought it was something in my room. Since then, they haven’t fully gone away. It was only today that I realized that my symptoms were actually because of allergies. It is possible for someone to develop allergies later on in life, right? Please correct me if I’m wrong.
This actually makes me very happy. I feel like I want to celebrate and dance and jump around and hug somebody with allergies. Now I can share in their suffering and love my friends in that way. I feel even stronger now. Whenever one of my friends starts complaining about allergies, I want to smile at them and tell them the story about how I didn’t have allergies before but I have them now. I’ll tell them about why I sometimes wished for it. I hope this brings smiles to people’s faces!
