For as long as I can remember, the smell of fish nauseated me. I would wake up from my afternoon naps to my dad cooking tilapia or salmon and I’d immediately feel sick to my stomach. Then I would beg my parents not to force me to eat it for dinner - I remember locking myself in my room to avoid even going out where it would smell worse, learning how to open my window all on my own just to air out my room.

My school would frequently have fish frys to raise money; it was a small, tight-knit private school in the middle of a nowhere town so everybody went to these. The students, the parents, the grandparents - maybe the creepy guys from the principal’s church who came to every. single. event the school held. I was whatever the teacher’s pet equivalent is when it’s the principal and not your teacher, so I was expected to go. I dreaded the fish frys more than my own mortality. We still went to them, even though I had to be physically dragged out of the house and would sob the whole way there. Even though the fish looked undercooked, and the fries were chewy and cold. 

I’ve always been fascinated by fish, though. I love animals, in general, more than anything else. When I was younger, I wanted to be a veterinarian, and that was the only thing my extended family really knew about me. So, whenever I went on trips with my grandparents, or went to visit my cousins, they would bring me around to all of the animal museums, aquariums, and zoos. The penguin exhibit at the Saint Louis Zoo will forever be my favorite exhibit ever. Though the entire building reeks of fish, and I could never leave without throwing up in the nearest trash can after I walked out the doors. Just recently, I went to a huge aquarium while visiting family in California and there was about ten minutes where I just had to sit on some steps and take deep breaths to stop myself from getting sick. By the time we were leaving, my head hurt, I was dizzy, I felt like I could barely walk. 

For a long time, it was just a mystery. To me, to my parents. It never seemed like a big enough deal to bring up to doctors - though, in retrospect, if I were my parents… I definitely would have been concerned that my child was screaming and crying over a smell. 

The climax of this story is a fateful day when I was about ten. My parents thought that the best fancy restaurant to bring their child, who has been adamant his whole life that the smell of fish is equivalent to torture, was an exclusively seafood restaurant. There were no chicken nuggets, no kids cheeseburger for me to eat. It was either seafood, or starve. I fought for a long time at that table, in front of guests we brought with us, for my mother to just let me starve. I tried to bargain, I tried to compromise. I would eat the complementary rolls, then we could pick up something on the way home. She wasn’t going to let me do it. 

So, I did the bravest thing little me had ever done - I took the smallest, teeniest bite of the fried shrimp they had gotten as an appetizer. It was… The most delicious thing I had ever tasted in my life. I fell in love with it. Finally, I can go to seafood restaurants, and I will just order the fried shrimp. Finally, I’m not left out of the seafood hype. I ordered a whole plate of just shrimp and I ate every one of those little suckers. It made me forget about the aroma that made the air of the restaurant thick for a moment… Then, it hits me. My stomach drops and I can barely even think straight. My eyes get all droopy and it almost hurts to move. Getting outside is a blur. I’m sitting with my sister on a bench, holding my stomach as the cold air just makes me feel worse. 

In the backseat of my moms car, I threw up into one of the bags their takeout had been in. It’s just me and her. My sister and my dad are staying, to finish their meals with the others. I spent the rest of that night hunched over the toilet, running the highest fever I’d ever had. 

Not even that was enough to concern them, though. I was still being harassed with the smell of cooking fish in my own home long after that. But now, at least, my dad would cook a piece of chicken for me instead of making me find my own food if I didn’t want to eat the fish he made. 

A little while later, my mom was concerned I might be allergic to cats. I got a cold around the time some neighborhood strays started popping up, and that was what made her take me to the doctor. Not the years of vomiting, crying and begging to not be anywhere near fish. I’m not allergic to cats. I am allergic to shrimp. 

How ironic? I love fish, but I can’t view them. I love the taste of shrimp but it could literally end my life. I love oceans and beaches and seas and rivers,  but I can’t go anywhere near them without getting the worst headaches. 

I want, more than anything, to discover. But everything above sea level has been found already.