Put a finger down if you got out of a five year toxic relationship that ruined your self confidence and body image so you spend a whole year rebuilding yourself and loving who you are just to find out your role model “loving” parents who were married for 30 years are getting a divorce because you learn that your father is actually verbally and physically abusive towards your mother and has assaulted your brother on multiple occasions. So you become the rock in your family and keep everyone grounded while the worst case scenario is going on around you. During this time period your mentally ill father tries to take the house from everyone threatening that everyone will be homeless so you and your brother brainstorm ideas on what you can do to keep the house, and come up with this brilliant idea that if you both buy the home together and buy out your father you will have somewhere to live with the small cost of being in debt for a long time.
Additionally you are working a full time job and balancing a full time college student schedule during your parents divorce mess because your college loans never cover a full semester so it is your responsibility to come up with the remaining balance which is typically thousands of dollars and you don’t qualify for any kind of financial grants since you “make too much.” (aka 35k a year) So then you add on a paid internship which counts as a second job but this second job is located in DC so it is a farther commute then your commute to school which means you have to pay more in gas and tolls but bite the bullet because it is what you want to do for your future job so you try your hardest to not complain and to just be grateful for the opportunity.
Since you are so busy you have no time to mentally process or grieve all the trauma you just experienced in your home life, and you now have a new stressor which is figuring out how to afford your monthly expenses that just increased a ton plus all the debt you inquired in such a short time span.
On top of everything one day you realize that you haven’t gotten a period for over 4 months because you’ve been so stressed with dealing with everything so you panic and think that you are pregnant because you realize that you gained 40 lbs out of nowhere, you’re experiencing extreme fatigue, none of your clothes fit and the questions from family and people you normally see at your job are asking you the “are you pregnant” questions. So now not only do you have a battle with your family, your school and work life but now a mental battle you are having within yourself:
So then you start thinking and you realize that the body changes are not adding up because you are a frequent gym goer, you changed your diet months ago, and every pregnancy test is negative. So now you’re confused what’s going on with your body so you go to the doctors and they tell you that there’s nothing wrong with you and this is “life of a woman in her 20s” and the only advice the doctor gives you is to continue exercising, eating better, and learn how to manage your stress better. But, then you go and get a second opinion and you actually get diagnosed with PCOS because your hormones are all out of whack and since you’ve been so stressed out it caused your anxiety to be worse and project symptoms of depression and low self esteem which you were already feeling because you’re body changed and your body image was already tough to deal with. Then you come to find out that women with PCOS typically struggle with fertility so then your guilty conscience is weighing on you since you were so mad that the thought of a slight chance of you being pregnant was the worst thing in the world because later down the line you may not even be able to have children, and becoming a mom is one of your biggest goals in life.
Eventually you come to realize that life is a roller coaster ride with high, highs and low, lows so, you now take everything with a grain of salt and learn that all these ups and downs are creating the person who you need to be for your future self and your 20s truly do suck.
Pretend you see me putting my finger down*
I wanted to write about what my life has looked like recently, and the struggles I have faced with the changes within my body and the factors that played a big role in the changes in my body. With the interpretation of the rollercoaster ride I have had as an evolving female navigating through my twenties. In the article Not Just the Reflexive Reflex it focuses on body politics and I wanted to share my experiences and say that I think body politics are real and I was a victim of societal expectations and body standards based on me being a female. Larger power dynamics like, the doctors, previous boyfriends and my parents all had something to say about my body as if they were entitled to, which was affecting the way I saw myself. Now that I have gone through those experiences and learned the only opinion that matters about my body is mine, I believe that no larger power dynamic should have any say on how one should view their body. I think the most important takeaway is to just accept that you are not made for everyone, everyone goes through something, ignore people’s opinions, and to just be kind to yourself.
Unruly Bodies 
Thank you for sharing and being vulnerable in communicating your experiences. I think that your experience really demonstrates the societal pressures we put on women and how infrequently people actually strive to help women who are struggling. I sincerely wish the best for you, and I hope that you can find those in your life who support you and encourage you to just do the best you can (whatever that may be at a given time). The way that we as women are policed bleeds into more areas of our lives than I think we tend to realize, and this affects our bodies and minds on a profound level. It is moments and experiences like these that remind us how crucial it is to look past the individual and instead examine why our system and society has allowed things to become this way.
I really relate to what you said about your stress compounding within your body to the point where you developed PCOS. Statistically, women are actually much more likely to get autoimmune diseases and other kinds of diseases (that manifest from a lifetime of repressed microaggressions and obstacles and restricting rules placed on our behavior and our bodies). Something I’ve struggled with myself when it comes to processing all that built-up trauma is that I don’t even know where to start. It feels like every bad thing I’ve ever experienced is like a spark entering my nervous system and my life experiences keep adding sparks until I am constantly dysregulated and anxious. Therapy is a resource that needs to be made more accessible and affordable to people, and it’s something I have the privilege to be able to go to. It’s helped me so much and even if you can’t or don’t go, I hope your life settles down at some point soon and that you’re able to start healing from all this.
Sharing and experiencing these are both really difficult, I am so proud you for opening up and for pushing through the difficult times you had. It is really odd how we share some similar experiences, down to the toxic relationships my father almost taking the house and almost kicking out my mom, brother, and I after considering divorce, paying for college myself, dealing with a missed periods from stress (I didn’t get mine for over a year??), etc. Family feels like they hold so much control over our bodies, as well as doctors as you mention. There is so much fat phobia in the medical, as if anything wrong with you is caused by weight and/or weight gain. I’m so sorry you’ve had to deal with this. Weight fluctuates so much, especialllyyyy when dealing with so much. The pressure placed on women’s bodies in society is so unreasonable and unattainable and the second you stray from these, people will clearly not let you hear the end of it. I hope things have gotten better for you, hang in there!!