One thing you learn very early on when you're diagnosed with an incurable illness is that your condition doesn't define you; if anything, you learn that your condition just defines the type of day you have. For me, my condition is at the very least predictable. If I just go about my day as usual, I'm perfectly fine. Those are the good days. The bad days only happen when I decide to eat dairy. That's right, I am a brave soldier living with lactose intolerance.
It can be a tough life, but I know I'm not alone. In fact, I'm a member of the "Hot Guys Who Are Lactose Intolerant" Facebook group. All eight of us in the group take pictures of any dairy products we find and we post it to the group so everyone else can leave rude, and often vaguely threatening, comments. It was always the little chunk of competitive solace I had in this cruel, dairy-filled world. I knew there would always be other guys who were less hot than me, but also suffered as I do every day. My routine each day would consist of the following:
Wake up
Stretch (handsomely)
Yawn (even more handsomely)
Check the Facebook group to ensure that I am still the hottest man there (easy)
Leave rude comments about the dairy pictures that are clearly directed at the less-hot poseurs who posted them
Reread my favorite book
Admire Chad (yours truly)
Fall asleep (the most handsome part of the day)
Repeat
To you, it may sound tedious. To me, however, it was my little time loop of never consuming dairy. I figured that my life would always continue just like this, with each day as sexy, yet uneventful, as the day preceding it. But the universe always has funny little ways of laughing in your face as it rips up your carefully-planned daily itinerary and hands you a completely unrelated new schedule, as I learned the day Benjamin Florian stumbled into my life.
YOU ARE READING
The Fault in Our Chads
RomanceNarrated by teenage Chad, who refuses to let his illness define him, we're told a story of young love, heartbreak, and living each day like it's our last.
