The first day you take the shot, it’s a pinch.
The seventieth day you take the shot, it’s also a pinch.
Your clothes get bigger, so does the vacant space in your closet, because nothing suits you.
Your wallet gets emptied as you replenish what you’ve lost - the memories woven into fabrics that no longer suit you.
And sure, some excess skin.
And sure, we can wear the clothes we envied the cool girls in high school wearing, so you reclaim the brands for your inner teen -
Nobody said you’d have to learn to accept the wrinkles with your ripped jeans and tripped genes.
Now my eyes are larger and wider than before.
The moon face has slimmed and borne a crescent in my side profile.
Apparently, my face shape is oblong, guess I have to learn how to do my makeup again and pick out for flattering glasses frames for my face.
I also see better - because I’m seen better. But that is not better, is it?
How is Jupiter less visible than Venus?
People sought too much distance until they saw you, then thought you deserved proximity.
You really notice now how much you were never noticed then.
My feet seemed to shrink. Now I need new shoes.
I miss the ones I walked in, because I knew the familiar path I traveled in, but now it’s not stable and secure.
I somehow need smaller shoes to match my smaller clothes.
Did you also know you’d feel nerves when an ingrown toenail cuts into your seams and you’d feel the pain all night? It presses on your nerves.
Perhaps you did not expect to get it-
And at the podiatrist’s the next day, nobody assumes you’re a diabetic.
How funny the big toe is where you find your balance and you’re fighting daily to not lose it when you’re actually gaining it.
My breasts shrunk, I need new bras.
I go for ones that I feel comfortable in, yet also ones I feel divine in.
And to think it’s also how I finally drew their eyes in.
The coworkers who’ve never said anything to you now flock to ask your secret. You get calls, messages, side comments, the praise,
Oh, even the “wow you’re so brave!”
Why is a weekly shot a moment of heroics?
“I actually needed it,” I add, “because of my genetics.
My hormones run on chaos and disorder, and it’s like I’m in a prison, but the new warden I’ve hired calls The Shot, and so I check in on the improvements daily, and weekly, and monthly, and I think it’ll be for a very long sentence.”
But nobody cares if you’re a prisoner to your body,
Seems they just wanted the fence to look pretty.
“How did you do it? You look phenomenal!”
“Thank you, it’s my medication and a structured plan!”
And I hear this whilst shivering and teeth clattering.
I also lost my insulation and body heat, so despite being brought into the warmth, I’ve never felt more cold.
People are so quick to help you warm up now.
Sometimes I think of Cassandra who tried to tell others about the larger body that was locked out of the gates, and how it took for a sudden shrinkage for her to have been proven right.
Something in front of their faces was there the whole time.
Maybe because they didn’t see the Trojan Horse as a threat.
Funny. Most men never thought me worthy of Trojans either.
And women never thought me worthy of an enemy.
Good thing for them then, how my hair has also thinned and shredded as much as my sanity seems to have.
I’m told it will grow back, stronger and healthier than before.
Do I grow it back showing my age and silver strands of wisdom and weary, or mask it until things look normal again?
The real side effect nobody tells you when losing weight,
Is how you’d lose yourself to find yourself,
And that’s not the half of it, even if you are now half of it.
I’ve lost, it seems, how I saw the world,
And discovered just how it never saw me to begin with.
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