The Toll the Medication for My Mind Takes on My Body

At present, what makes me most uncomfortable is the way my body has changed due to my medications. I’m sure everyone with some kind of mental illness and going through therapy experiences changes in their bodies. I’m no different. I put on a lot of weight over the past year, and now, it makes me feel bad about myself.

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How do you cope with something like that? Every time I visit my psychiatrist, I ask her to give me medications that won’t make me gain weight. Every time I’m on Google, I type “how to lose weight” or “why do bipolar disorder medications make you gain weight.” Every time I try to start an exercise routine or a diet, my mind won’t even let me get out of bed.

I know these thoughts are in my head, and they’re not healthy. It’s different for each individual. Today, I want to talk about the humiliation and loss of confidence I feel when I look at myself in the mirror. I see all the ways my body has changed in places, and I feel regret. I flinch at the sight of me.

I know I have already done more harm than good to my body. I have scars to bring me back to reality every time I wander in the fantasy land where everything is “normal.” I have been told to treat my own body like a temple, but that was long gone when I first self-harmed. I have taken medications that were not for me for far too long to do damage to my internal organs.

Now, when I think about the ways my mind has tortured my body, I feel ashamed. Knowing that all this time it was me who did the harm under the spell of my mental disease, I feel a pang of unimaginable guilt. It is true. I have been my brain’s most abused prisoner.

While we think others around us are most affected by our disease, we forget about ourselves. We feel guilty over everything, think about making it up to everyone, but we don’t think of ourselves. Everything that happens around us, the mistakes we make, the deplorable decisions we take, those are all as hosts to our mental illness. We pay the high price for it all, except we forget ourselves.

We don’t apologize to ourselves, our bodies. We apologize to anyone else we might have hurt or done wrong to, but we exclude our bodies.

Now that I stare at my image in the mirror, I just want to say I am sorry. I apologize for all the crap I put you through, all the unhealthy things I have taken in, all the times I hurt you, all the medications I still have to take to be “normal” and not hurt you.

But you know what I realized today while looking at myself? I have paid enough. I have sacrificed enough to be sad about how my body looks now. This is the price I pay to be “ordinary.” Because none of us are ordinary, really.

I think I said this before and I will stick to it: People with any kind of mental illness are far from ordinary. I have been struggling with the changes in my body, body shaming myself, all the while not realizing these are the medications that hold me together, hold my brain together, so that I can’t harm myself further.

If you are feeling the same thing I have been feeling for so long, then just stop. Stop and take a look at yourself again. You’re beautiful no matter how your body has changed. You’re held together tight with glue. There is no reason to hate your body. It has gone through enough. Don’t forget yourself. You’re your own little miracle no matter if your brain tells you otherwise. Don’t let your illness win this war.

If I can’t accept myself then how can I expect others to accept me the way I am? My campaign Hope Is Good is more than a cause for me, it’s my entire life. I wish to help people, but I can’t do that if I can’t help myself. So, I have made a promise to myself: No more shame about my body. No more guilt. A promise to love myself.