Tag: body image

How it’s been going, I guess

June 11, 2025

TW: sexual assault, body-image

I have come to realize that men aren’t that complicated. I’ve spent way too much time trying to figure out if a man was attracted to me or pining after the ones who obviously weren’t. If a man wants you, he will let you know. They tend to not be coy and try to trick you, they will be upfront. Even the shy ones will show some sort of attention to you.

I’ve always been on the uglier side, especially growing up in the early 2000’s and being bigger. (Even though I think society was too hard on me. I wasn’t that ugly as a teenager from looking back on pictures.) I have had the worst luck with romance.

Because of my body-image, I’ve only received attention from men in the most toxic and self-centered ways. I’ve only been with one good man and we couldn’t work it out. He gave up on me long before I ever gave up on him.

But beyond him, I have had no good experiences with men. I’ve had too many times where I was pressured into sex. I don’t considered it rape but I was definitely manipulated when I didn’t want to have sex. That has for sure added to my pelvic floor trauma response. I don’t know if I have endometriosis or if I have too tight of a pelvic floor, but sex hurts and honestly, has kind of sucked most of my adulthood. This is probably why I’ve been okay being celibate for the last 3 years. I just don’t miss men.

I did have someone I was interested in briefly in the recent times but he fell off the face of the earth. Just my luck. So, I’m back to building high emotional walls and just being a cat lady.

Life minus (some) meds

February 10, 2024

[TW: food, body image, dieting, weight discussion. I recognize I grew up in privilege and never experienced socioeconomic situations where hunger happened because there was no food. I struggled with money in my twenties and had to go hungry a few nights or live off oatmeal for a week but I always had safety nets. This post is solely my opinions on how I grew up and how that affected my relationship with food.]

I’ve been having issues with accessing my doctors lately. I’ve had many appointments pushed, by months, recently. I am leaning on the hope that everyone in the hospital system is just doing their best and this is just an unfortunate circumstance but it doesn’t remove all the frustration. One of these appointments was with my psychiatrist.

I was recently put on mirtazapine and stopped taking trazodone for mood/sleep coverage. Mirtazapine was supposed to cover what I was going to lose with the trazodone. But mirtazapine came with more than just some okay-ish sleep, I got a new emotion, fake hunger. Yup, I became hungry at all times. I woke up hungry, I went to bed hungry, I was hungry right after eating. It wasn’t normal.

Maybe it’ll get better?

My life’s motto

I’ve been on some restrictive diet probably around 20% of my life. Being overweight since age 9 will do that to you. I know what hunger feels like. Whether it be weight watchers and their point system to zone diet with their zones? I don’t remember. Neither really took. It wasn’t until ozempic that I truly discovered comfortable weight loss.

I’ve lived my life believing that weight loss had to hurt. You had to be punished for being fat. Your life was too indulgent and you need discipline, now learn to starve. Do you know how much it messes with your head to ignore a basic human need? My body wants food and I can’t eat it. To this day, I ignore bodily signals like having to pee for hours on end because “I can’t possibly have to pee yet.” (I blame ADHD for that.)

“I can’t possibly be hungry yet,” was a thought I never wanted to experience again, so, I spent the last 4 years eating what and when I wanted, regardless. I topped off at 322lbs at my heaviest and it wasn’t until this miracle drug, Ozempic, that I’ve ever been able to lose any significant weight. (I’m at 40lbs so far.) And I don’t feel hungry on it. I actually had a side effect of forgetting to eat at all then almost passing out from hunger. (Whoops.) That faded while my body got used to the drug and now I eat a normal amount of food to a small bird. It’s almost like a gastric band in a shot. I was able to be restrictive without the gut wrenching, soul crushing pain.

The mirtazapine brought back the hunger I was without for over 6 months and with it all my feelings of inadequacy and triggers came back too. I actually would feel hungry after just consuming anything. It was impossible to know when I actually needed food or was being tricked by this medicine.

As a child, I had a doctor tell me medication doesn’t cause weight gain. “Pills don’t have calories,” That was his excuse to shame me for my weight. I have been on hormonal birth control and antidepressants since I was 16. I was also 200lbs and 5’8” in the early 2000’s. I was fat and it was all my fault was the general message from everywhere. Society, peers, parents, doctors, gym teachers. But this new medicine might as well be served with a side of ice cream.

Pills don’t have calories.

My childhood doctor

Around the time I started mirtazapine, I was losing around 2lbs a week, consistently. I would have been on Ozempic for 7 months by then. Within the first 2 weeks of mirtazapine, I gained 2lbs. I not only stopped my descent, I pivoted and gained weight. It devastated me.

I decided to wait for my psychiatrist appointment to bring this up because my life’s motto is, “maybe it’ll get better?” It didn’t.

Then, my appointment was pushed two months. Thankfully, I am able to message my doctor through a patient portal. I explained the situation and he promptly (within 2 business days) messaged back to stop taking the mirtazapine. Full stop. There was no, “and start back on trazodone.” I’m just stuck now, in medication limbo, not sure if I will be able to sleep ever.

My only redemption is that I still have my adderall prescription. This is for a future post but I’m pretty sure I have always had ADHD/neurodivergent tendencies and not fitting in, being shamed when unmasking, and being exhausted from all of that is why I’ve been depressed since I was 9. Now, I’m learning how to live with the correct treatment and I would have to say, it’s not too bad.

Thanks for reading.

Weight-Dependent Love

October 24, 2023

It started yesterday afternoon, this migraine I’m nursing at the moment. I feel as if my brain is splitting down the middle, like a watermelon in a vice. The ringing in my ears indicates that I’m probably dehydrated. This isn’t a new concept for me. I’m always in a state of mild dehydration, then I’m confused when I exert myself at all, I almost pass out.

I’ve spent majority of my life (over 25 years) overweight and less of a person in the eyes of society. I wish I could go back to when I was in high school and convince myself that I was beautiful and my parents are assholes. It was my parents who started my body image issues, the people who were meant to protect me turned against me and thus, I turned against myself. This is a longer story than I am willing to type tonight.

With my caregivers lacking in emotional competence and shame-based parenting tactics (Catholic Boomers), I’ve learned that I am not worthwhile, I am a burden unless I’m spending all my time as a corporate shill and obsessed with my weight. Every living second is meant to focus on what you eat, when you eat, how much you eat, how much everyone else is eating, and finally the guilt from eating at all.

This became a me problem as much as a my family problem. I can see it directly in my mother the torture she went through with her mother. I see it in my mother’s sister and her daughter the way we all talk about ourselves, our bodies, and other people’s bodies. It’s toxic.

This is devolving. A good thing is that my therapist wants to start focusing on my body image issues. Growing up in the late 90’s/early 00’s was rough on little fat me with society valuing thinness over average bodies. Everything was “super model thin this” and “cocaine diet that”, all over the news, magazines and godforbid my crutch through childhood, tv. (TV was my ADHD coping mechanism growing up.)

The reason I write about this today is that I’m still plagued by fears of rejection based on my body. Everything comes down to my weight. In reality, I think it matters less to the people in my life than I make it out to be. I don’t have to make excuses for the way I look but I feel like I do. I can’t shake the feeling that just existing needs to be apologized for. The cognitive dissonance is deafening.

I live in a constant tug-of-war in my mind. I am confident and motivated one moment but also, hate myself and feel like a burden at the same time. It’s exhausting. No wonder I rely so heavily on cannabis, it stops the in-fighting.

This is where I leave you, dear reader. I hope I made some sense because I have no idea what’s going on. 🫶✌️