I Just Got My Key Card At My New Internship

I feel like an adult, for the first time – I’m working the morning radio shift in Philadelphia. I’m up before the sun, showing up fifteen minutes early to a building that looks like it gets polished by hand each night (there’s a doorman) and I finally can think – this is what it’s about! My adrenaline fills me up too much to realize I only had three hours of rest. Alone in the apartment kitchen every Tuesday and Thursday, I imagine myself five years from now with the same feeling in my stomach. I see my dreams inching closer each time I snooze my 4:25 AM alarm. 

Breaks in the office are frequent but very short – once you sit down, you can’t get up until the segment is over. Just last week on Tuesday, I was sitting at the computer next to my coworker when I unleashed one of my all-too-loud sneezes. I quickly laughed it off, “Oh my god, don’t you just hate….” allergies. I hate allergies. And when I realized what had happened, I opened my eyes to the small alert at the bottom of the desktop screen – high pollen today. 

I’m twenty years old, and my seasonal allergies still take me out for days, weeks, at a time. What gives? 

Anytime I explain to someone I still have seasonal allergies, I feel like the little kid on the playground with boogers smeared across my face. Every time I use the bathroom to blow my nose, I wait for the scolding I got in elementary school for frequenting the bathroom so much. 

I’ve been allergic to ragweed for as long as I can remember – but I officially bit the bullet and got tested when I was 18. I’ve had a multitude of mild food allergies growing up, but my seasonal allergies were incomparable to most. The changing of the seasons gives me a stuffy nose, scratchy throat, headaches, and every symptom that sucks. Ragweed season takes full strength in mid-September – right on schedule.

I finally took that big step and found myself growing into the shoes of an adult with a real job, and I still find myself locking myself in the bathroom like it’s the period after recess. I’m still my fifth-grade self dusted with pollen in a cold stall at the top of the hour, every hour, to spare everyone the white noise of blowing my nose. 

I won’t be able to catch a break until I work up the courage (and funds) to buy some allergy medicine, or until the frost nips the ragweed for the season. Until then, I’m stuck feeling out of place in my internship because I can’t resist the urge to wipe my runny nose on my sleeve the same way I did at age 8.

• allergies
• internship