#scentless

Not everybody is born with an innate sense of identifying spices purely by scent alone.

If you were expecting a wondrous story about my journey to stardom in the grandest restaurant of all time with the most renowned chefs, lower your expectations to zero. I could not smell a candle if it were placed right under my nose. #scentless.

Before you jump to any absurd conclusions and envision me without a nose like a gender-bent Voldemort with a head of (gorgeous) ginger hair, still your imaginations. I’m not in that boat, thankfully. Regardless of nose or otherwise, I cannot smell. And it's all because of that damn bricking job I did a few months ago.

You see, I haven’t the foggiest idea on how to brick up a wall, but the price was good, so I rolled with it. Wouldn’t you? However, by the end of the job, I would have preferred to be abducted than collect my paycheck. But my ADHD needed the money to spend on another impulse buy for a short-term dopamine boost. Happy chemicals, you understand.

It all started when I put my trust in a friendly YouTuber, who, I soon came to realise, had no idea what he was talking about. One chemical was put into another chemical to create a substance that was alien to me, but I went along with it because the YouTuber sounded confident. Brick by brick, I cemented the walls of a horse shed, working from 9 am to 3 pm every day with a vigour I was not aware of possessing. Brick by brick, I came home and realised my cats no longer stank up their litter box, the church must have stopped lighting incense, and I could no longer smell my raspberry, blueberry, magical morning tea as I drank it. You can imagine my disdain in this. I used to look forward to my raspberry, blueberry, magical morning tea.

I worried that this was a bad omen and the end must surely be coming for me. Perhaps it is, but I try not to stress now. Whenever I feel a twinge of sadness, I remind myself that at least I don’t have to smell the musty scent of potatoes while removing them from their straw-like bag to prepare Sasha’s favourite meal: handcrafted gnocchi.

Before you ask, yes, I have searched plenty of times for ways to regain my scent on my iPhone. Yet, every voice on the internet is…probably not in my best interest: try bleach, smell(?) this herbal remedy, watch the Hunchback of Notre Dame but only the scenes with the gargoyles.

At this point in time, I suppose I must accept my scentlessness and remember: never trust a confident man on the internet again.