“You used to be so pretty, now you’ve gained weight…What happened?”

I am growing up…

I remember when my breasts were coming in, it felt uncomfortable. My hips were widening and it was very painful, and I remember crying in the bathroom in the middle of the night about that. Hair was coming in all over my body. People took notice of that, especially boys in my class. One of them even told me to shave, as a joke, because my brows were too thick and bushy. I went home and plucked them… way too much.

At age fourteen, my period was inconsistent, I was gaining weight, and my body hair was getting thicker. The doctor diagnosed me with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) after he found cysts on my ovaries.

According to www.healthline.com, PCOS is defined as “a condition that affects a woman’s hormone levels. Women with PCOS produce higher-than-normal amounts of male hormones. This hormone imbalance causes them to skip menstrual periods and makes it harder for them to get pregnant. PCOS also causes hair growth on the face and body, and baldness. And it can contribute to long-term health problems like diabetes and heart disease. Birth control pills and diabetes drugs can help fix the hormone imbalance and improve symptoms.”

The moment the doctor told me about it, I had a flashback to those late nights when I stayed up late at night googling my symptoms. PCOS kept coming up, so I already knew about it. Then, the doctor prescribed birth control pills for me, told me to watch my weight, and added some medications that would help control hair growth and male hormones. On my way home, I cried about it, even though my mother told me it was nothing, since I will take the medication for it and we’ll watch what I eat. That did not stop me from crying.

Those pills fucked with me at night to say the least. I started to hear things like whispers and moans. I cried and prayed over and over but it didn’t stop. I rushed to my mother’s bedside every night for about two weeks. I clung onto my mother and hoped the whispers would stop. They did not. And heaven forbid anyone turned off the lights during the day.

When I realized that the medication I was taking to control the hair growth was the cause of my hallucinations, I stopped taking them.

At the age of fifteen, my mother noticed that I had gained a lot of weight. I was officially at my heaviest. She took me to another doctor, who gave me pills that were supposed to help me with my insulin resistance. He told me to drop the weight immediately or else my PCOS symptoms would get worse. I took the pills and lost some weight but I was still considered overweight. But I liked the way I looked. I was overweight but I loved my body and my curves. I was confident and happy. I thought I looked sexy actually. But the insulin medication toyed with my hormones, accompanied by the birth control from that other doctor. I was a mess emotionally and couldn’t ever think straight. It was constantly making me nauseous and dizzy. The doctor decreased the dosage but I started taking even smaller doses myself.

A year later, I spent the summer exercising and eating a little healthier, yet losing very little weight despite my efforts.

Fast forward to a few months later and I was almost seventeen. When my birthday was about ten days away, my parrot passed away in front of me. She had been feeling very ill and must’ve caught some virus. I couldn’t believe it, and I was traumatized. To this day, more than a year later, I can’t believe she’s gone. I wake up sometimes expecting her to be there even though a part of me knows there’s no point in wishing. I had lost weight very drastically because of it. I began to let my anger and frustration out by running, cutting down on meals, and avoiding that one spot in the living room where she once used to be. I was angry that the world took away my beautiful parrot, who had nothing but love and support to give me after a crappy day at school. I started to feel uncomfortable at the taste of sugar and started cutting down on salt.

Every single girl or woman that has crossed my path would ask me:

“Are you dieting?”

“So, how’s your diet?”

“What’s your secret?”

“Eat something already!”

“It’s not fair that you’re skinnier that me!”

“Sorry, but you’re not allowed to be skinnier than me!”

“No seriously what have you been eating?”

“You look a lot better now than when you used to be very ummm…full.”

“How often do you go to the gym?”

I hate this “I give you a compliment but with a pinch of salt” attitude. I hadn’t been ona diet— I was just never hungry. When I was hungry, I ate healthy and took care of myself. I never starved myself. Instead, I was eating the better portions then than before, but everyone saw that as this attempt to lose weight. I hated those around me who saw me as competition now. Don’t sit there and tell me I can’t look “better than you” because you have so many insecurities that you need to make others feel bad about themselves.

 I worked hard to maintain my body after my mourning period, but my PCOS symptoms were getting worse. The hair grew in more places, darker and thicker than ever, and I always seemed to have acne on the sides of my face. My period was becoming lighter and lighter till it eventually disappeared.

I had missed my period for a few months now so I headed to my doctor during revision period for the final exams of grade 11. He seemed very pleased with my weight loss and told me that I just need to continue losing some more. I nodded in agreement since I was planning on working on my body during the summer anyway. I told him that I had missed my period, that the hair on my body has gotten thicker, and that I always seem to experience pain in my ovaries. Also, for some reason I had been going to the bathroom very frequently, almost every one or two hours, for the last seven months. He performed an ultrasound on me and I started to feel uncomfortable very quickly. It felt painful even though I had been through it multiple times before. But this time I wanted him to stop. I kept my mouth shut and sat on the pain. I looked at the screen while he explained to me that there was a large cyst pressing down on my left ovary that was almost the size of my bladder. Explained the bathroom trips I guess. He gave me birth control for my period and more medication for the cyst. He said that since it was big, the medication might not work, in which case I would have to get surgery to get it removed. My next appointment was in three weeks, on the same day of my final exam.

I spent revision week and exam time looking over my shoulder, in pain and worried about what was going to happen. On the day, I woke up feeling sad, like I had to glue myself together. So there I was in an exam in pain and ready to cry at any moment. The night before, I didn’t sleep all night, contemplating whether I should email the coordinator and tell her the truth, but I ended up going instead. I had spent the last three weeks telling myself to get a grip and that there was no excuse, that these exams were very important.

During my appointment, the doctor did another ultrasound. He told me that the cyst was gone and that my period should come back in a few days.

I had never thought that my PCOS would worsen but I guess it had different plans. Now I feel like I will have to spend the rest of my life fearful that case something like this might happen again. However, throughout the last few years on this journey I learned few things.

Fuck social expectations that make people so insecure that they end up projecting these insecurities on those who are confident.

Once you lose weight you are not automatically going to feel less insecure. The smaller I got, the more insecure I became. Smaller does not equal confidence and body acceptance.

You shouldn’t be afraid to tell your doctor what’s wrong even if it feels like an insignificant detail, might influence the diagnosis.

And there is nothing wrong with taking care of yourself and taking the time to work on it. Just because others don’t do it, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. Some people are just spiteful that you take the time and they don’t.

Y.H.