As a teenager, I want to live while I'm young. I want to rebel to get the best fun I can. I am not very easily broken, but there is one small flaw about me that affects my day to day life. I am allergic to a color: red. Red dye is an allergy I recently had to be aware of. I have always been allergic to it, but every reaction is worse than the last, so now I have to be conscious about what I consume. The first noticeable reaction I had was to make up. As a girl, this is something that would really affect the rest of my life. If I need to hide something on my face, I would have to let it show or there would be bigger consequences. I have to make sure I take really good care of my skin if I don't want to show up to a formal event with my face spotted red. My red dye allergy also affects my food consumption. There is red dye in so many products, I can never be too sure that what I'm eating is safe. Products with a "natural" label sometimes put dye in their food to make it look more appealing. At first, when I reacted to it, I just got a small patch of a rash somewhere on my body. The risk was far less than the reward, so I didn't pay any attention to labels or ingredients. Over time, I kept ignoring my allergy and my symptoms kept getting worse. I kept getting larger rashes, dryer eyes, and an itchy throat. Drinks, candy, gum, cereal, cakes, ice cream, and sometimes even things you would never guess like medicine, yogurt, and health bars. Artificial cherry, strawberry, watermelon, cinnamon, bubblegum, orange, and even grape are things with red dye. If I buy assorted candy, I have to give all of my favorites to my friends. In a way, I'm glad I can do that. It gives me an opportunity to share with my friends. This also affects most of my hobbies and jobs. Baking, painting, sewing, and even biking has caused me to have reactions that stop me from doing it. I have to call into work sometimes or I won’t be able to finish a commission because of my allergy. It’s such a little thing that I keep forgetting about and it prevents me from moving on with my day. It throws off my sleep cycle, it ends my day early, and I keep forgetting about it because it is still so new to me. One day I’ll get used to reading labels and maybe I will memorize the products. So many of my pastimes are ruined by my exponentially worsening allergy. I want to be so many things, I have so many dreams, but I can’t accomplish them if I am allergic to a color. I have to wait a certain amount of time after my bedsheets come out of the dryer, I have to leave my red fabrics alone for a while after I press them. I’m wasting so much time with this allergy that I am losing time to accomplish my goal. It will take days for me to finish things and it discourages me from finishing them. Thankfully, my career path is working with machines and I don’t have to worry about dye. When I graduate in 2 years with my bachelors in mechanical engineering, I am hoping that in that time I will have it all figured out and it won’t affect me much anymore.