The Guilt Complex gone Kusch-style

The guilt complex, my friends, is something that I have always been tortured by. Though at the same time, I feel like it has kept me out of lots of trouble too.

It seems that my own guilt complex has altered itself though in the last couple years, and I can't make sense of it.  

Chris always tells me that I apologize too much, but I don't think I can help it. I always feel like everything is my fault, or like I'm the cause of everyone's inconvenience. I'm not upset about this, cause I don't think it really hurts anyone, but I don't understand it.

Here's an example that someone brought up a couple weeks ago. 

--All of my friends know or at some point knew that I can't eat gluten. I've had to explain to everyone what it is, what it does, show them the rash on my hand that acts up when I eat it, etc, etc, etc.  I don't mind sharing that with people, but I feel like I inconvenience them by it. I try not to mention it if food isn't brought up, and it usually comes up by someone talking about pizza or something, and I'll say something to the effect of "ooo, I wish I could eat that" or something like that.

The part where this gets distressing is when people invite me out to eat---at a place where I know I can't eat anything. It works out fine if I already ate or if I'm not hungry and I can just get a drink, but 98% of the time, it's during a meal time when I actually need to eat.  This whole blog could probably go into another blog about how I can't say no, but I'll leave that for now.  

I feel bad that when people invite me out, I have to put a stipulation on where we go. That doesn't seem fair to me. I tried to do the whole "stick it out" kind of thing during the school year and I went to Pizza Hut with Chamber Singers a couple times for lunch...but... 1) That doesn't exactly leave me anytime to eat when I get back since I have a 1pm class, 2) Technically I could scarf down some salad at the salad bar, but it tastes like shit, and cost $5.99 or something like that for crappy lettuce and horrible toppings...3) I can't even begin to describe how hard it is to sit and sip on a root beer or coke and watch everyone around me eat one of the primary foods that I miss most, not to mention the wonderful aroma of pizza surrounding me! I wanna cry, but I don't want to look weak. I want to leave, but that would look bad too. I want to complain, but then people are like "oh, well that sucks..."-- and whether they mean it or not, I don't want people feeling bad for me.  That just makes me feel even guiltier. 

Well, I don't know where that leaves me. I don't feel resolved about anything, but at least I got it out of my system, right?

BTW, I just found out that the Flinstone Gummy Vitamins that I have been eating for many months have gluten. SOAB.