a rambler in recovery

[i'm not licensed as a professional of any type, do not use my word as gospel] covid-era college dropout that can't stop writing essays n stuff potentially triggering content within feel free to reach out if you have questions or suggestions

[movewhereyougrow]

A little about me

Firstly, I will not be using real names for personal stories, so assume any name is fake and any location is a rough approximation. Call me J.

I was born at the turn of the millennium in a big-small-town in the mid-South. I was the youngest until I hit primary school. Then, my folks had another kid and I became the middle child to two high-needs siblings.

Now for the personal stuff, including mention of potentially triggering topics;

I'm afab transmasc. I was out as a lesbian for 4 or 5 years before coming out as trans, so I got to experience a wide variety of reactions to different coming-outs . It took my family a long time to come around, and I'm actually not totally convinced yet, but I'm a story of 'no child of mine will ever--' panning out to a happy ending.

I have been in and out of the doctors my entire life, from a major bone break to hormonal disorders and mental healthcare. I had a severe limp starting at age 10 that I'm only very recently correcting through physical therapy. I was in chronic pain for the 15 years between.

My partner and I met while I was crashing out from college and newly-diagnosed C-PTSD, and after a year I uprooted to move to the PNW with him. It's been a few years now, and I feel like I've grown to become the kind of person I needed when I was younger online.

I have been urged to go into peer counseling or victim advocacy, but I'm still working through some mental health issues (because growth is continuous) that I feel would make me less helpful than some people need.

Ideally, something I write on this blog will spark hope in someone going through a hard time. It's hard to imagine being happy when you've never had it before. I wouldn't say I'm a success story, but I am certainly happier and healthier than I ever believed I could be.

Thanks for the time, Nice to meet you

J

[movewhereyougrow]

So I've been visibly overweight my entire life. I maxed out at 300 some odd pounds at 22 and I'm at 180 these days, so I basically became half the size over the course of four years or so.

I'm grateful for my healthy, long-term progress, but I spent a lot of middle and high school wallowing in pro-ed spaces. I thought I'd heard everything that would happen to your body when you lost weight cause I spent every waking moment thinking about it.

However, not a lot of people in those spaces started out quite as big as me. Their experience is just going to be different than mine. They were probably all in high school too, really. I'm in a healthier mindset now than I was then, so I feel like I've got wisdom to pass on. (A list)

With all that said, here's a list of changes nobody prepared me for:

Feeling "phantom" weight where my stomach and hips used to stick out

Similarly, retraining my brain to know my current size (body dysmorphia perhaps?? unsure)

Changes in chronic health conditions. Some improved, some had new issues emerge

Anxiety about bones/muscles/tendons that have never been visible through my skin before

Losing a decent bit of strength due to losing a weight advantage

Struggling to throw away old clothes or buy new ones because learning new sizes sounds daunting

Losing a few friends. I assume they felt that without our weight in common that we had less comradery, but I really don't know. They just started distancing and didn't seem very happy for my progress.

Ordering what I used to get at a fast food place and realizing it's sooo much more than I can comfortably eat now

Feeling a little alienated with yourself and having trouble pinning down why

I was always bigger than everyone else, I was the human garbage disposal that could eat anything, and I didn't realize how much of my personality I'd been hanging on that until I wasn't anymore. It was hard to figure out who "I" was when people around me had boiled my sense of self down to "fat guy."

There's a lot of changes to the sense of self that go on through periods of growth, and there's no way to anticipate every curveball, but patience and care for yourself will get you to the finish line.

[stuckinapril]

Always always always tell people you love they are so smart and capable. I will die on this hill. More often than not people are raised in unforgiving environments that tell them they are inherently “stupid” and not good enough for things, whether that be parents or cruel bosses or unsupportive friends. An underrated way of supporting people is reminding them they are brilliant no matter what anyone has ever said about their intellect and potential. People can do wonders when it’s affirmed to them their limiting beliefs are just that: limiting beliefs.

[movewhereyougrow]

I was a "gifted" kid. I had this sense of shame and impostor syndrome for the longest time because I'm smart on paper, but I felt so painfully stupid in my own head. I couldn't talk to anybody about it because they'd roll their eyes and insist I'm fishing for compliments, even when said compliments made me shrink away.

Even with empirical proof that I'm, at worst, average, it's still a battle sometimes not to beat myself into the ground over every little mistake. Every slip-up is "proof" that I'm a book smart fool with no survival skills and no self control--but working on interrupting my instinctive self-depreciation has made life so much more fulfilling.

I'm learning to suck at things. I'm learning to be okay with crooked stitches and shaky lines. Being bad at something was the easiest way to get targeted for ridicule in my household, so I compulsively avoided things if I wasn't immediately good at them. Support from my partner and close friends has been a huge part of me venturing into new territory.

[movewhereyougrow]

"Inherited" trauma and overcoming my birthright

There's been a few terms thrown around. "Inherited trauma" really struck a chord with me, but I see "intergenerational trauma" used as well. What I'm talking about today is specifically the effects that traumatized parents can have on the children they raise.

tw for death and abuse mentions

My partner bought chocolate oranges for us for Christmas. We get settled, and I slam mine on the table with the force of a thousand suns. A few orange slices always broke, but hey, you gotta crack a few eggs. My partner looked over in quiet horror before gently rolling his orange on the desk and getting a much prettier, much less messy treat. "That's how my family showed me," was my sheepish defense as I ate my chocolate shards.

It's weird to realize how many things you were taught wrong as you get older.

I was already in college when I started realizing how weird my relationships with my parents were. Being around other adults besides the people I grew up around was making it really clear that I wasn't on the same page as everyone else.

To this day, I can still recount every tragedy and trauma from both of my parents' lives. The untimely death of a mother, a string of cheating husbands, dead siblings, assaults. When they had these conversations with me (as young as 6 because I have a strong memory of an incident) I can say in retrospect that they weren't modeling a healthy relationship with their emotions.

These trauma vomits came at random, always met with hyperventilating and red faces and tears. Often a screaming match about something seemingly unrelated. My mom never had a mother-child relationship modeled for her, she couldn't. My dad never had a father-child relationship, either.

When it came time to grow up and start coping with my own traumas, instead of being productive, it always came out in the same way. Red-faced, crying, and inconsolable. That's how emotions were modeled for me. Feel nothing, say nothing, until it's too much and you have no choice but to let everything out at once.

It's easy to riff answers for an essay exam, but the hard part is actually executing coping skills. I was a little deluded into thinking that because I knew all this shit, I just had to be better at coping with everything. It took some vulnerability to open up and relent to the fact I couldn't employ any coping skills despite knowing them.

I was shown by my parents that there is no room for flexibility or "give." Hold firm until you shatter, no bending. This research article from 2021 really put me down this path of realization the first time I stumbled across it a few years back.

Like a lot of skills, you don't realize you're getting better until you're backed into a corner and have to rely on them. Going from 30 mins to calm down from a panic attack to 25 mins doesn't feel like a lot, but doing that one or two more times cuts that distress time down by half.

It takes a lot of little steps to go a long way. It's daunting. Every now and then, I leave my parents on read for a few weeks instead of dealing with them. Not the healthiest, probably, but I don't have explosive arguments with them every other week now.

None of this is to say that traumatized children will become adults who make more traumatized children--cycles can always be broken. I just found this whole perspective enlightening in terms of forgiving abusers. Living 3K miles away definitely helped facilitate forgiveness, but having precise words for how I felt failed made it easier to process my emotions about it.

If you spend your whole life watching people smash chocolate oranges, you're gonna have a lot of shattered chocolate. It can feel really embarrassing (for fuck's sake, it's a chocolate orange, doesn't everyone know how these work?) but the most important thing to do is offer grace to those who are learning.

[glowcowboy]

as someone who constantly gets stuck in ruminative cycles, figuring out a way to stop the cycle before it gets out of hand has been incredibly formative for me. if you find yourself ruminating or unable to stop the cycling, here’s a place to start.

am i learning, processing, or ruminating? it’s important to be able to distinguish between the three. learning is when you receive new information that updates your frame of understanding. processing is when you study a situation to help yourself understand it. ruminating is when you cycle over the same thought repeatedly, often causing distress. learning and processing are productive, while rumination is destructive.

which theme is this? understanding the root of the spiral has helped me to untangle why the rumination feels so intense and scary. (example: i’ve been ruminating on one specific interaction with someone where i think they might’ve misinterpreted what i meant. this is my theme of fear around being misunderstood.)

how do i respond? (example: okay, this is that theme of being misunderstood. but it is not my job to make myself perfectly understood. the people i have around me can ask clarifying questions if they’re confused, and they are willing to meet me in the middle because they want to understand.)

don’t feed the raccoons tuna. (this is an example from my therapist that i love! essentially, don’t feed the beast or it will keep coming back. distract yourself, journal, listen to music, etc.)

[movewhereyougrow]

my relationship with my mental health meds over 13 years -

Obvious tw for medication, also tw for sh and violence, and incompetent doctors. A long read.

I was about 12 or 13 when I got screened for depression by my primary care doc. Or anxiety, or something. I might've been caught self harming? These years are super muddy for me.

They'd just barely finished filing the divorce papers--hence my score on the depression screening--and they were too busy bickering to take it seriously. They took me to the appointment, together for the first one but getting into such a nasty argument that the other few appointments were with only one of them.

My biggest impression from the psychiatrist I was seeing was that she seemed disinterested and untrusting of me. I remember explaining how I was feeling, shaking like a leaf while my parents sat on chairs on either side of me, and this blonde woman's face pinching up like I'd told her my dog ate my homework.

Despite all that, she told me that it seemed like I had bipolar depression and sent me away with a prescription for Lexapro. My current psychiatrist tells me that prescribing only an antidepressant for bipolar disorder is a huge no-no, but I was just following doctor's orders at the time.

My middle school years are smeared because I was so frequently manic on Lexapro. The doctor eventually added on Lamotrigine, a mood stabilizer that I now take as an adult, and the crash down from the manic highs was enough I made an attempt on my life.

Or, a middle-schooler's attempt. I'm a little anemic and got spun out really fast, and then I got caught. I never had another appointment with the child psychiatrist. My parents tossed all my meds and made me sweat it out cold turkey at my grandma's house with her doting on me.

Took a week of cold sweats and fevered delusions before I was finally feeling leveled out again. So, this experience kinda enforced medication as an ugly, awful thing that nobody really needs (untrue) and I really took that to heart.

I wasn't until I was in my first year of college that I decided to swing by the campus clinic and see what all that free mental healthcare nonsense was about. I gave them the same rundown I just gave you, and they screened me for anxiety, depression, and bipolar.

Yes, yes, and yes they said. I started talking with a counselor every other week, who I intend to discuss at length some other time. The important part here is that sometime in my sophomore year, I decided to say fuck it and give medication a shot again. What could it harm?

I'd moved out of my mom's and I was feeling pretty grown up now that I could do doctor's appointments on my own instead of mentioning the same issue 10 times until it became an emergency. I started off with Lamotrigine again, no antidepressant. I was feeling pretty good.

They bumped up my dose, I felt even better. It was working great until a few months in, one of them suggested I give Seroquel a shot to deal with some of the lingering depression symptoms. I was apprehensive but willing to give it a shot despite all of the anxiety I had about trying any new meds.

Oh my god. I took one pill, and the next time I was conscious and lucid was almost 24 hours later. I couldn't wake up, my alarms did nothing, I went immediately back to sleep after I woke up, I took another one thinking it might just need to build up to a certain level or a tolerance or something.

Day three, or four? I called the campus clinic in hysterics, crying and apologizing for not wanting to take my medicine and begging for a note for the DAYS of class I'd missed. Didn't get much sympathy and, after a while, I stopped getting mental healthcare there altogether. It was spring of my sophomore year when I came out as trans and started pursuing hormones. When you live in a rural area of a red state, turn out the closest doctor that caters to trans individuals is about 3 hours away. But damn if my doctor didn't make EVERY appointment worth it.

One of the lovely things she did for me was taking over prescribing my Lamotrigine so I didn't have to go to the campus clinic anymore. I told her about Lexapro and Seroquel and all those issues, and she understood my apprehension about adding anything extra to the regimen.

That summer, I was in a position of authority when a mass shooting broke out. The event rattled me so badly that my doctor could instantly tell something was wrong when I came in for our next few months checkup. I started explaining to her how it went down and how I felt, and based in part on the fact I hadn't left my house for nearly a month as well as being unable to sleep for days on end, she diagnosed me with PTSD.

She suggested Prozac for the anxiety and sleep disturbances and said it could help with depression symptoms. It turned everything around for me, for a bit. If you aren't aware, bipolar individuals are among the most likely to stop taking their meds. Part of it is the impulse control issues, part of it is the waxing and waning of depression, and part of it is nostalgia for being manic.

I'm not sure which one compelled me, or if it was just me being lazy, but when I uprooted to move up north, I slowly ran my refills out and didn't set up with a new practitioner. After steady medication for two years or so, I was back to rawdogging reality.

But, like... I felt okay? Pretty okay. I kept being pretty okay for about two years until the anxiety from the rural-to-urban shift really overpowered me, and I ended up pursuing therapy again. She got the whole story, too. It was about 6 months in before I tentatively decided to start on my mood stabilizer again while I worked on coping skills.

Lamotrigine and Prozac has turned out to be the ideal combo for me with my particular symptoms and sensitivities. I tried Buspirone last year trying to deal with some stubborn anxiety. I felt more anxious at first, but I rode it out for a week or two before contacting my doctor to discuss stopping it. Didn't work out, but now she has me taking Hydroxyzine for little anxiety flare ups instead and it's working great.

I take smaller doses now than I used to. As I work on processing my trauma and strengthening my coping skills, I need the anxiety meds less and less. I spent like a decade agonizing about it, though. I stayed up late, sleepless and lamenting how broken I felt.

I've cried before about it--I explained it like mourning a reality that didn't get to exist. It never felt fair that some people just function fine without it, and I felt like a failure for needing help. I felt like nobody would ever want me, like a sick puppy. I've cried about the unfairness of having to spend money on the pills that make me function.

I've felt all of that and a hundred more big, sad feelings, but I'm inarguably so much happier now. Every now and again, I still get a twinge of "I feel fine--why am I even taking pills?" but I continue to take them anyways. That's an impulsive thought, not intrusive... I think?

tldr: Being in recovery is hard, even for people that seem high-functioning and on top of things. Things like taking medication aren't always so straight-forward, and sometimes it takes a little scary experimenting to figure out what does and doesn't work for you. There's no 'right' answer, and sometimes what's 'right' changes based on circumstances.

[movewhereyougrow]

From a former fat kid

TW: A ramble about weight, self-image, and the mindset involved.

The first time I remember being shamefully conscious of my weight, I was eight or nine. The entire afterschool group got to go to the public pool and play around, and since my parents never took me, I was psyched. I eagerly waited in line for the pool's kiddie water slide. Weight limit, 100 pounds.

I got to the steps and the lifeguard hesitated before turning me away. "You look like you weigh too much." And I did. Ten pounds too much, my mom told me later when I came home crying. I didn't get the kind of sympathy I expected and instead got a soft lecture on watching my weight and eating better.

That was the day I learned to be frustrated and ashamed with my body. I gained weight no matter what I did. It's not a shock that I developed disordered eating habits, but it was a shock at 15 when I got diagnosed with PCOS.

I started on metformin, I started eating low carb, and the summer between freshman and sophomore year I went from 270 lbs to 225 lbs. It was the first time in my life I'd had any substantial weight loss. I was so happy and proud of myself, but I found myself getting worked up and angry that I was suddenly making friends.

It seemed like my classmates were all shallow fucks that would only treat me with kindness and respect if I looked prettier. It made me bitter. Years of name-calling and bullying seemed to suddenly resolve.

One day my grandma came by for a visit after a few months of not seeing her, and she really shattered this mindset of mine with one sugary remark. "I didn't think you were too heavy before, but I'm so glad to see you looking so happy and loving yourself. I missed seeing you smile."

All at once, my face was red. I was blaming everyone for being shallow, but I was really blind to how miserable I was about my weight. I hated myself and wished more than anything that I wouldn't be seen or noticed by people. I assumed the worst from everyone, I bit back at sincere compliments with snarky disbelief, and I hardened myself up so people couldn't keep hurting me.

In doing that, I not only pushed away the bullies, but anyone else that might have wanted to be my friends. When I could smile and chirp back "Thank you!" and actually mean it, I was suddenly much more approachable. I made more friends in high school than I ever had before and started feeling more confident in myself.

Between then and college, I developed a binge eating disorder and started burying my feelings with food since I'd never been taught how to cope. When I met my partner, I was creeping towards 300 lbs. By the time we met in person and moved in together, I was.

It's been five years or so, and I now weigh 180 lbs. I'm not like skinny thin, but I don't feel fat anymore. Not the same way. I still have my days with low self-esteem, but my personality is no longer entirely colored by that lack of confidence.

When I moved out of the South and everything stopped being cooked in butter and beef tallow, it is shocking how much weight dropped with no real change in eating habits. I didn't realize how insane Southern-style portions are, either, until I started noticing how much smaller plates everyone up here seemed to make. Even at buffets!!

Before moving, my average at buffets was four stacked plates + a dessert plate. These days, what I eat at the buffet is probably closer to what I used to stack on one of my multiple plates. Every time I cook, I still cook portions like I'm feeding an army and my partner's family loves to razz me for it.

I'm eating less pasta and bread and focusing more on protein for my everyday, but I still eat cake and candy and bullshit too. My partner was a major help in pointing out some of my harmful habits, like the physically painful overeating, even though it was a hard convo to have.

My parents are overweight too. They spent a lot of energy telling me to stop being fat, but they didn't spend nearly as much time helping me form a healthy relationship with food. Neither of them had one, though. They couldn't model something they didn't have, and in the end I had to learn those skills for myself.

tldr; I've been overweight pretty much my entire life. I had all the excuses--insulin resistance, PCOS, physical disability, depression, my parents being overweight too--but I still managed to become happy with my body. My weight isn't the only thing I think about anymore, and once it stopped being an obsession, it was suddenly easier to be happy and celebrate the small wins along the way.

Becoming happy with yourself is a journey, and sometimes we aren't given the best map, but we can find our way there without it.

Also, kids in school are way bigger shitheads than your average adult. I've never had a single adult try to swipe a credit card on my fat rolls, but it felt like a weekly occurrence on the bus in middle school. I cannot stress how much people suck until their prefrontal cortex finishes developing lmao. Some people are eternally childish, but most people are so caught up in their own shit by their mid-20s they can't spare the energy for a shitty comment to the chubby guy walking by in the supermarket.