Ode to the Peanut
Written for Akiko Busch’s class “Research and Writing II”
Dear peanut,
I used to hate you. I won’t beat around the bush about it. But you could kill me.
I hated you vaguely, the way you hate something you don’t really know or understand. I had little experience with you: I’d never tasted you, held you in my hand. I knew what you smelled like. I knew what you looked like: small, brown, so unassuming. Although you could disguise yourself a million ways. But that was it. And I’d never had a violent reaction to you (that I could remember, at anyways). My hate was ideological rather than visceral. All the things you were in; all the things you stopped me from doing.
At school, they tried to make me eat in a room by myself. They didn’t know how to handle you, or me. But I grew up, and you made me strong. I felt the fear people directed at me (their own fear of the unknown), and learned how to trust myself in the face of others’ doubt. I thank you for that.
They respect the danger you can cause now. There are even laws that make sure your name is labelled on every product you’re in, even if there may only be a ghostly trace of you.
But even with all the progress we’ve made - I was still not invited, kicked off a plane, the punchline of unfunny jokes. You hurt me.
I could never allow myself to hope that you and I might one day have a different relationship. Doctors and researchers said that wouldn’t be possible. I did hope that one day, I might be able to control you; control you just enough that you would allow me to do the things I always wanted to do, like travel to a country where I can’t even make sense of the characters of its language. I simply hoped that if that day came, I would not be too old to enjoy it.
When I found out at thirty that you could no longer kill me, I felt unmoored. I’d spent much of my life trying to navigate a world heavy with your presence; who was I without you? Sudden limitlessness is terrifying.
But I wasn’t free of you. That would have been too easy, and my feelings for you were always complex. The only way I could keep you at bay was to eat you, constantly yet precisely. This was hard. I did not like the taste of you, and you were still making me react, mildly but disconcertingly. In the beginning, I had a hard time thinking about the fact that you were in my stomach. It felt wrong, violating. You shouldn’t be there.
I ate you in M&Ms. But after twelve a day for three months, I felt you were making me fat. I tried putting you on toast, but I didn’t like how sticky you are. I tried putting you in oatmeal. When I tried eating you plain, and I gagged. I put you in smoothies, and that worked for a while. But you are so messy. I tried freezing you in ice cube trays, but it didn’t really help. You’d get stuck on the wall of my blender, leaving me afraid that I wasn’t getting my proper dose of you. And when I ate you in liquid form, you seemed to trigger me more often. My allergist suggested I stop. Now, I mostly eat you with dark chocolate. I still don’t like the taste of you.
I worked my way up from twelve of you a day to twenty-four every two. You only give me a reaction every once in a while, as long as I don’t forget to eat you. Recently, you made my eyes bloodshot. That was new. I struggle with accepting that I will have to do this for the rest of my life.
But! I can eat anything anywhere now, go anywhere now. I thank you for this, too.
Yours,
Natalie