I’ve always had itchy skin. Sensitive skin. Problem skin. Whatever polite term the adults around me used, the reality was simple: I reacted to everything. Dryer sheets. Scented detergent. Some makeup made my eyes puff up. Perfumes that smelled terrible and made my arms and neck itch.

The solution was also simple. Just avoid ever touching anything that could possibly maybe potentially irritate me.

Done. Easy. A kid can understand that.

Strawberries didn’t enter the picture until I was twenty. As a child I refused to eat them unless they were the fake kind. Strawberry flavoring? Yes. Actual strawberries with their little red alien seed pods? Absolutely not. The sandy seedy texture was upsetting on levels I didn’t have language for.

But at twenty someone prepared strawberries in a way that made them delightful. So I indulged. Pints of them. With whipped cream. Living my best fruity life.

And that’s when the hives came.

At first I blamed the strawberries. Of course I did. They were new. They were the variable. So I stopped eating them like any responsible over-reacting sensitive person would.

But the hives didn’t go away. Not after days. Not after a week. Not after two weeks.

This is when a normal person might have sought medical care. I, however, had a very high tolerance for being uncomfortable and a very low tolerance for being inconvenient or inconvenienced.

I finally broke when the hives spread to my feet. Fun fact: apparently I can tolerate hives anywhere… except my fucking feet.

I called in sick and called the doctor, back before you could schedule anything online. They had an appointment right away. At the time I thought it was luck. As an adult I now understand those emergency slots are for people with fevers that won’t break or for some dumbass who let hives take over her entire body for fourteen days.

The doctor looked exhausted. He asked a couple of questions, wrote a prescription for something topical, and told me to take Benadryl every eight hours until the rash disappeared.

I asked, very seriously, “But what about the strawberries?”

He paused long enough for me to know he wasn’t ignoring me. Then said, “I don’t know if it’s strawberries or it’s all of the stress, but the Benadryl will calm you down and block histamines. Don’t eat strawberries until things calm down a bit in your life.”

It was the first time I remember being dismissed and somehow seen at the same time.

I followed his advice. I took the Benadryl. I drank water. I ate canned soup. I slept. I slathered on cream. I repeated that cycle until the hives finally vanished.

It would take me years to figure out whether strawberries were ever the problem. Every time I tried them again something catastrophic would happen in my life and I could never tell if I was reacting to fruit or reacting to existence. The amount of nervous system work it took to confidently eat strawberries as an adult is unreasonable. The good ones are worth it. The bland ones make me wonder why humans ever bothered inventing fruit.

But I digress.

I’m not allergic to strawberries now. Maybe I was then. Maybe I wasn’t. What I do know is that my body has been aggressively overprotective my entire life. Hyper vigilant. Quick to panic. Quick to react. Quick to try to save me from dangers both real and imagined.

That hasn’t changed. What has changed is the scale of the reactions.

These days I’m trying to figure out my chronic illness puzzle piece by piece so I can do things like wander in nature or lift anything heavier than fifteen pounds without my body deciding I just attempted to compete against the Australian strongman from Physical Asia.

No body… I was picking up a flat of soda water. Not flipping a tank.

People might think this whole “get cami reasonably well” project looks restful from the outside. A lot of lying down. A lot of quiet. A lot of pacing myself. But it is the least restful thing I’ve ever done. I am not good at asking for help. I am not even good at accepting help freely offered. I’m trying to get better. Baby steps.

Behind the scenes my partner spends hours he doesn’t have researching inflammation, reactions, histamines, and triggers. He turns down food on my behalf because of seed oils. Seed oils are inflammatory apparently. I didn’t know that. I still don’t really know that because who researches that kind of stuff. Well, him.

There’s also the daily care, checking in on me between meetings to see if I need anything brought to the horizontal plane I’m existing on at the moment. You know, between his full-time job and his full-time volunteer gig, cheerleading startups here in Portland, and beyond.

Where am I going with this? Honestly… I don’t know. I’m curled up in bed typing this with one eye on the screen because the other is buried in a pillow while I hold my body in the one position that doesn’t feel like fire.

I wanted to talk about the pain. Not to complain. Not exactly. I wanted to marvel at the human body and its astonishing ability to be a complete asshole and also the beautiful machine that keeps me tethered to a world I love so much.

I spiraled through strawberries and hives and history because I didn’t want to say out loud how bad I am at letting people help me. That’s how bad I am. I would rather excavate nearly thirty years of medical chaos than admit I need support.

And maybe that’s the whole point. Or the closest thing to one.

I keep telling myself the flares will stop when I finally get it right. When I control every variable. When I make myself small enough, careful enough, disciplined enough for my own body to stand down.

But maybe the problem isn’t discipline. Maybe it’s that my body has been on high alert for so long it doesn’t remember what “safe” feels like. And I don’t remember what letting anyone help me looks like.

I don’t want to be a burden. I don’t want to need anything. I hate admitting that my body has been screaming for years and I’ve been trained to whisper back, “sorry.”

But here I am anyway.

In pain.

Not pretending.

I’m tired of negotiating with a nervous system that thinks everything is a threat. I’m tired of acting like I can fix this alone. I’m tired of fighting myself just to exist.

I don’t need a miracle. I just need a break.

A real one.

The kind where my body unclenches before my willpower does.

Maybe that’s not weakness.

Maybe that’s the first honest thing I’ve said about any of this.