places where i have dissociated

“Anti-Bodies”
I am tentatively diagnosed with Coeliac disease in November 2016. The
diagnosis is confirmed June 2017, and I can finally stop eating the gluten.
I need the gut damage from it to be diagnosed, but it is ruining my health
every day. In the seven months between the blood test and the endoscopy, I
go to the Cowley Tesco and stand in the Free From section, and stare at all
the foods I will be consigned to eating for the rest of my life, and my
brain zooms out of my body. Tesco becomes a place for near-breakdowns: my
weekly shops usually involve me having to hold back tears, mostly while
staring at bread made from rice flour and who knows what.
My body has altered against my will. Coeliac is a genetic autoimmune
condition, but is sometimes dormant until the body flicks a kind of switch:
usually a period of intense stress. Some people get sick after a bad stomach
virus. I got sick after a period of intense anxiety and bizarre unkindness.
So I go to the Tesco every week or so and stare at the purple Free From
signs, and all the weight of my past anxiety, and my squirming belly, and my
increasing inability to keep myself fed fills up my brain until I have to
leave it.
It’s been two years since that initial blood test. I no longer eat gluten,
I’ve gained back the weight I lost when I couldn’t digest what I was eating,
I’ve cut ties with people who have hurt me, and my mental health has,
overall, improved. I’m not angry about my coeliac anymore. My body is what
it is, and my easily-damaged villi are a precious part of me. I don’t
dissociate every time I go into Tesco. But at this point, it’s become
habitual. Earlier this year, alone in a new city, I encounter the biggest
Free From section I’ve ever seen. I should be happy, and I am, but I
suddenly feel that usual overwhelming feeling, and leave myself, a shell, in
the corner of Sauchiehall Street Tesco Metro.
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