the body I forgot to have

on Zoloft and the weight of being seen

Trigger warning: for anyone dealing with CPTSD, depression, or ED.. please tread carefully x

At 31 years old, I begin struggling with body image and face dysmorphia. In reality, my body has not changed, nor has my face. Of course I have a few more fine lines and less chubby cheeks, more sun spots on my shins and scars on my belly. But all in all, I have been the same pants’ size since I was a teen. 

The shift happened suddenly. It was like waking up in the mirror one day and realizing I had a body. A body?? I’ve been carrying this thing around? With my cellulite and box hips and snaggle tooth and crooked nose from when I broke my face in college? Is this how people walk through their day? Comparing themselves endlessly to models they see on the internet, to girls with flatter stomachs and nicer clothes and poutier lips they bought for a few thousand? There was a level of shame I felt, having just noticed. Wondering what I had portrayed to the world all of these years, if it had been good enough.

Why didn’t I take advantage of my baby-like skin when I was 22 and learn to wear contoured makeup? Why didn’t I wear shorter skirts when my legs were much thinner and had less sun spots on them? How am I just now noticing that other people can see me? Why am I so concerned with the way I am being perceived?

I had spent so much of my life trying to leave my body, and mostly, doing it successfully, that the aesthetic part of it was rarely in question. Sure, I had moments where I would change an outfit because I didn’t like how I looked, or slapped concealer on a breakout.

But I don’t ever remember spending any time thinking about how my legs looked in shorts, if my breasts looked perky enough during sex, how expressive my face was in photos, why my eyebrows were shaped a certain way, or if my teeth were white enough. I floated through the world with the protection of being a somewhat-good-looking-enough--girl: never having to stop and question if I needed to change the way my body looked, because I didn’t want to have a body at all. I lost myself in alcohol and boys and workaholism… so I didn’t have to reckon with the painful reality that I held an existence at all.

Now that I am embodied and processing emotion, I feel the weight of so much more. I recognize that my body is not only something I carry around; but the way I present myself, elevate my status, or serve a role in the world. This can’t be how it’s always been… the pressure feels unimaginable and too heavy to carry. I google plastic surgeons in my area, and make an appointment for a consultation call. I cancel the appointment the next day. I scroll on TikTok and see a famous influencer normalize her eyelids being cut and sewn up for a more revived look, and wonder what the fuck we’re doing as human beings. I delete the app and redownload it two days later.

Three summers ago, I started to get the help I needed in processing my bodily trauma. I had never been on medication before, even as a massive-depressive and someone struggling with CPTSD. I had done the best I could moving through my life with little to no support. But it was time for a change.

All of my life, medication for depression had been looked down upon. In our family, we didn’t not talk about our bad feelings. We never spoke of the trauma that happened at 12 and pretended the guidance counselor didn’t call home every semester. We dried our tears and moved on, because that was how the world worked. We absolutely never asked for support. Or consider any form of diagnosis that could lessen our status in the world. I believed my brain and body were these unfixable, unspeakable things for so long. 20 years later, it all catches up.

You can only run for so long.

Four months after starting Zoloft, I was sharing with a group of women the feelings of absolute desperation I felt before the chemicals kicked in. How I was stuck to the bed, the walls, the floor. How food tasted like chalk and I had nightly debates with the razors in the back of the bathroom closet until one morning I threw them all away– How amazed I was at being a living person again. I had awoken from my triggered state, and begun to heal my mind and body again. For the first time in my life, I felt safe.

The progress of this is indescribable.

The friends listen quietly and nod their heads slowly, one grabbing my hand with a gentle squeeze. Another continues on of her own experience— “I wanted to try Zoloft”, she tells me, “but I couldn’t deal with the idea of gaining weight”. She continues by saying of course I would never gain weight, I am so small, and she had an eating disorder all of her life.. one that would only be exacerbated with medical intervention.

Gaining weight? My mind was reaching, trying to connect the dots, attempting to figure out if we were in the same conversation, the one about my brain trying to take my own life. My mouth became dry. 

Was this something I was supposed to be terrified of? Surely there was something wrong with me, something I was missing, a warning sign I had missed when filling out the forms and consulting with my psychiatrist. I take out of phone and google zoloft weight gain and scroll for hours through the search results, like a light being turned on in a dark room.

I had been so focused on feeling safe in my own head, I had forgotten about my body. I hadn’t cared to notice the filling out of my tummy in my pants— how some of my bathing suits had no longer fit.

My mind did not have the privilege during my depression to fixate on how my body looked or presented, just like I did not care when I was drinking myself into black for ten years. I was too focused on saving my own life to consider how I would be affecting my presentation to the world. How could I, as a woman? Why do I believe I am one of the lucky ones?

She gave me her fear, and I held out my hands, unsure of what to do with it.

The problem is that I am always listening, always taking in, always engaging. I believed her fear to be valid, and real, and worthy. Because for her, it was. Plus, I realized I lacked valuable knowledge on how to wade through this. I have not been in my body very long, and I do not know how the world works.

Now that my body and mind are connected, and once again safe, perhaps it’s only logical to restructure the way my physical body is presented. After all, when was the last time I cared to try? When was the last time I had my eyebrows waxed or bought a new makeup palette, or put on an outfit other than clothes from five years ago?

And so I stopped buying the salt and vinegar chips, and walked past the ice cream sandwiches at the grocery store. I stared longer than normal when getting dressed and slipped my hand between my pants and belly to notice the space was closing. I stand in front of the mirror late at night, picking and peeling at my face— pinching the softness of my lower belly.

Sometimes we do not realize the fear we hand over to other people. Sometimes we do not realize just how long they hold onto it.