Is it an allergy even?
The topic of my child’s allergy is the only one I know of that can bring a good conversation between myself and friends, family or coworkers to a screeching halt. The silence is immediate, the eye contact faulters, the person nods but stops listening, unsure of the route they’ll take to change the subject. It’s the closest I’ve come to ever feeling like a conspiracy theorist, and it makes me wonder if conspiracy theorists lack the ability to read other peoples emotions, or if they simply endure these encounters, the way I now have to. It seems we don’t know how to handle information that goes against our deeply engrained truths about the world we live in. It’s not that they don’t believe me, It’s something else I can’t figure out. My daughters’ allergy to food dye came on swiftly after some Dollarama candy she’d picked out herself with a gift card from her 5 th birthday. It was a rare treat, blue powdered sugar in a small plastic baby bottle. I scoffed when she chose it, but it was