The unfairness of life

I have coeliac disease - meaning I have to eat a gluten-free diet so that I can absorb all my other nutrients properly. This is something that I'm sure my friends are sick of hearing me talk about; but how can I not talk about it when it is so limiting for me? Food is one of the main things that I do that make me happy - whether it's eating it, making it or watching other people eat the things I've made, it fills me with a lot of joy. 

So imagine the disappointment when I walk into a beautiful French-style bakery that has all of these delicious looking cakes, pastries, and breads displayed for everyone to gape at, only to find that the people who have made these things - people that have an immense amount of skill and knowledge - did not make anything gluten-free. The rest of my family pick out their choices, excited to eat possibly some of the best things they've ever eaten, and I watch. 

Now picture this: I live in a third-world country. My biggest problem is not my gluten-free diet and the food I am missing out on, but rather it's the fact that I am a girl. I don't have the right to an education, and my future is arranged marriage, children and poverty. Every day I see the lucky few, who can either afford it or who are boys (depending on the country's laws obviously), go to school and learn new things to further their chance at life. School: a place of mystery but undeniable greatness. I've never been and chances are I never will. But my hunger for the knowledge that I know could be available if only things were a little different is growing all the time. 

Children all over the world are having these thoughts all the time. They think about what could have been with a sense of quiet anger, frustration and simple sadness. But they won't have to feel this way forever. 

To go back to being gluten-free: I had an amazing experience the other day. As a Christmas present from one of my friends, I was handed a cookbook of only gluten-free recipes. They ranged from doughnuts to bread, eclairs to seven layer cakes, and cornish pasties to bagels. It is truly a book of happiness for me, which sounds silly unless you know what it's like to both be obsessed with food, and on a gluten-free diet. In that book I found hope that I could actually enjoy cakes that weren't crumbly and doughnuts that weren't disastrous. You would not have been able to find this book in bookshops anywhere if you looked twenty, maybe even ten years ago; the progress in gluten-free baking in recent years has been amazing. 

That recipe book for me, is like activists for girls without rights. They are the saviours of humanity - people like Malala Yousafzi and Nadia Murad are real-life heroes, giving hope to thousands of people with everything that they do. And just as English women got the vote after years of hard work from the Suffragettes in 1928, rights for girls and women everywhere will soon be a normality. We just have to keep going.