I am 19 years old and my parents are in their 50s. For as long as I can remember, I have been allergic to several things: Dairy, Wheat/Flour/Gluten, and Legumes. Since I was a young child, my parents have completely kept all of them out of our house.

While other kids ate breakfast cereals, I ate fish and assorted pickled vegetables for breakfast. While other kids had Lunchables, I had grilled chicken or fish with, again, assorted vegetables (usually sweet potatoes).

While other kids ate birthday cake at the birthday party, I had an apple. I never questioned this until a couple of months ago.

I was at my aunt’s house for my birthday party, and she made brownies for everyone. For me, she took great steps to make them with almond flour and avoided all of my allergies. I started eating them and thought little of it until my aunt suddenly looked at me and, in a panicked way, asked which plate I took the brownies from.

I pointed from the one where I got my brownies, and she immediately stood up and told me we had to get my EpiPen. She raced to ask my mother for it, and I sat there scared out of my mind because I had never mistakenly eaten flour before.

I noticed my mother had calmed her down, and then she said that we don’t have to worry because she had switched the plates of brownies, and after all I had eaten the ones made with almond flour.

I found this incredibly odd because, really, why would she swap the plates? That doesn’t even make sense. But for the time being I let the issue rest.

It didn’t sit well with me for about a week and I finally went to get an allergy test. The doctor started with a skin prick test, and lo and behold, I didn’t react to any of the above substances.

Then he ordered a blood test, and when the results came in, they said that I had absolutely no intolerance to any of the foods I’m supposed to be allergic to.

I was furious and called my mother. She eventually admitted that she lied to me because she wanted me to be on a paleolithic diet, and wanted me to be able to avoid all temptations.

She raised me with a lie about her own health, but she keeps insisting that I try to see it from her perspective. She spams my phone with messages about how healthy I am–that I never had acne, that I have been in great shape my whole life, that I have strong teeth and bones, and even that I got onto a D1 college tennis team.

She has started calling me ungrateful for her intervention and insisting that I really should be glad I never got “carb addicted.” I don’t know what to think. I carried around an EpiPen for all those years–one that I suspect may be fake seeing as my mother never got me to replace it–and I don’t even know anymore.