This picture was taken the day I graduated law school back in 2013. I look at this picture and I don’t see the accomplishment of graduation or the love between me and my blameless sister, I see in my eyes pride in how thin I was.
At that point in my life, I was pretty much subsisting on yogurt and apples and was the thinnest I’d ever been. My hands constantly shook, I was frequently lightheaded, and with every size XS I bought, I felt more and more in control of a life that was rapidly deteriorating. Within six months of this photo, I would fail the New York bar exam, my father would have a mini-stroke and begin a series of hospitalizations that would end in his death, and I would move back home—jobless and disenchanted—ostensibly to help take care of my father, but really because I was out of both options and cash. Hanging out with my father was a plus, but I wouldn’t know how much of a plus until three years later when he passed away and this time was all I had to look back on to keep me afloat in a sea of grief.
But on this day in May, I didn’t know any of this. All I knew was that I was stronger than food and the desire to eat. This feeling of control has been a recurring theme in my life. I was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) when I was 16. Diagnoses of anxiety and depression would follow in the years to come. My life’s accomplishments have been overshadowed by depressive periods and times of intense struggle with OCD. How many pictures of myself do I look back on and not see myself, but my circumstance? The number is too high to count.
I would also spend years battling with disordered eating as it related to my attempts to control my narrative all the while cycling in and out of depressive periods; life, it seems, would afford me no breaks. It all came to a head in 2020. The pandemic changed things for all of us, but in a lot of ways, it just revealed the ways we will always be the same. Stressed, depressed, and increasingly isolated, I began to gain the pandemic pounds. This was helped by being on a high dose of an antidepressant only somewhat numbed the crippling pain of my depression while completely sapping me of my energy and motivation. Life has a way of exacting its pound of flesh regardless of international pandemics. To add to this building storm, my husband and I were also trying to get pregnant, and each week with no results added to my agony. It really was the perfect recipe for me to go back to what I knew best—obsessive thoughts and restricted behaviors.
I told my husband in September 2020 that I wanted to go off the medication (Latuda, for those of you who know and care about the name). My poor husband, who has had a front seat to my suffering for the past six years and would do anything alleviate my pain, quickly agreed, and told me that he would support whatever I needed to do. Going off the medication had one immediate effect—I got my energy back. This was amazing as it enabled me to obsessively work out. I rejoined My Fitness Pal and put myself on a 1200 calorie diet. I was working out five to six days a week. The pounds melted off, and I felt better than ever. Every day that I wasn’t pregnant; every day that the pandemic raged on; and every day that I felt myself slip further and further into despair, I channeled my energy into restricting my calories and working out. My old hand tremor started to come back as I saw myself drop down 20 pounds in two months. My husband’s grandmother told me I looked skinny. She said it with concern, but I glowed with pride. It was my talisman.
It is another conversation to detail the stress and strain the year of trying to get pregnant put on my relationships, but that can be discussed later. I’ll skip to the important part—we were finally able to conceive almost exactly a year after we started trying. To say we were ecstatic is an understatement. The only thing that overshadowed my happiness was realizing that I could not live on a 1200 a day calorie allotment and grow a baby. Luckily, being pregnant allowed me to finally find something that I cared about more than being thin or being in control. I continued to work out, but not to punish myself, but to nourish my son. I ate regularly and stopped counting calories. The pounds crept back on the scale, but I didn’t care. I felt good. I felt strong. I felt, for once, that I was doing the right thing for my body. At least I felt that way until my OBGYN pointedly told me that I had gained more weight than she was comfortable with. Tears pooled in my eyes, and I asked her quietly if the weight gain was hurting the baby. She told me no and sounded surprised that that was my question. She said she was worried I wouldn’t be able to lose it after the baby at the rate I was putting it on.
I left her office feeling numb. I wanted to do what I would have always done in this situation—binge eat thousands of calories as a “last hurrah” before starting a restrictive diet. I stood outside a pastry shop in NYC staring at the goodies an imagining my last meal. Ultimately, I walked away without buying anything, and I hated myself for becoming so weak.
I was working out regularly during my pregnancy, not at the frequency of pre-pregnancy, but at least once or twice a week. Complications arose towards the end that put an end to working out, and from then on out, the scale continued to taunt me. The night before my induction I weighed myself, and I thought eagerly about the moment I would come home from the hospital and somehow, magically, all those pounds would have disappeared. Spoiler alert, they did not.
Even so, I’ve spent the past three months taking care of my beautiful son and enjoying this time with him. No dieting. No working out. It has been special and exhausting. I learned that postpartum depression is a special type of hell. Thoughts of suicide and self-harm crept back in after years of lying dormant. My OCD came back, and my rituals began to consume me. I barely recognized myself. The only bright spot has been my son. I’ve been able to push down all these feelings when I’m around him, and I’ve been rewarded by his unconditional love and endless smiles. When he sleeps, rather than sleep myself, I find myself slithering down into a hole. Insomnia and stress eating are on the menu. As is self-doubt and self-loathing. My new OBGYN (the doctor who delivered my son and whom I jumped ship to for all my post-natal appointments) recognized that I had PPD immediately and set me up with social workers and therapists. As I have always known, there are no shortcuts in mental health and no magic answers, but I have been feeling marginally better as of late, so that’s something to celebrate.
I had a test of this marginality two weeks ago when I figured I would try on some of my suits in preparation to go back to work after being blessed with a 16-week maternity leave. Another spoiler—none of my suits fit, and this realization sent me into a tailspin. I cried. I bargained with God and/or the devil. I honestly don’t know who was listening. I tried a juice cleanse against my better judgment. I broke out My Fitness Pal again. I cried some more. Then I did something different. Something I had never done before—I ordered new clothes in a bigger size. I’m not saying I’m in recovery or that my depression has faded, but I am saying that I now own suits that fit my body. That must be a start.