I’m Tori, I’m 22, and I’ve always been this way. When I was a baby, my parents say that I would reject any baby food that had meat in it. I would eat calamari and shrimp, but that disgusts me now.

My parents like to teasingly call me a “breadatarian”. I don’t eat any type of meat, fish or vegetables. The only fruits I’ll eat are cantaloupe, strawberries, the occasional apple and blueberries (but only in waffles, bagels, muffins, etc. - never on their own). I don’t eat eggs (unless they’re baked into something), and the only cheese I consume comes in the form of mozzarella sticks, cheese pizza (with the right ratio of cheese to sauce), and grilled cheese (but only from certain places). I basically survive off of milk, Honey Nut Cheerios, saltine crackers, bagels/toast, and sweet things that are awful for me.

It’s not that I’ve tried all of these foods that I don’t eat and decided that I didn’t like them - I’ve never tried most of them. The only piece of meat that I’ve ever had in my life was a chicken nugget that my parents bribed me to eat in order to get a frosty from Wendy’s when I was little.

It’s not for my parents lack of trying. I got the attempted force-feeding, the bribing, and the “you’ll sit here until you eat this” (I would sit there and cry for an hour over having to choke down a single green bean). The doctors would tell them to not cater to me and “she’ll eat when she’s hungry”. Nothing worked.

I think it’s a mixture of aversion and something psychological. If something smells or looks gross to me (meats, veggies, etc), I’m not going to eat it. It’s like I can’t bring myself to try new things. I thought for the longest time that I was the only one until I found out that SED/ARFID existed; now, I wonder if that’s what I have.

In the past, going to new restaurants and hanging out with new friends/having sleepovers used to make me worry. In fact, I still get a little worried when I’m out with friends from college and they want to go somewhere to eat. We recently went to New York City for a class trip and twice I went to a restaurant with friends and only ended up having a soda because there was nothing there that I would eat.

I’d consider myself a pretty outgoing person. To lessen my anxiety about situations like those, I’ve decided that being up-front is the best way to go about it. I don’t mind telling people that there’s something odd about my diet. Sure, some of them don’t believe that it might be an actual eating disorder (“I don’t believe that; you’re just picky”), but the majority are at least understanding to my face.

I don’t know if it’ll ever change. The stories that I read about ARFID in the news sometimes talk of new things being added to people’s menus, but that hasn’t happened for me. It is really comforting to see everyone on here telling their own stories. It makes me feel less alone.