Growing up, I knew how to research. Researching stuff was my jam, and I built that skill through years of new hyperfixations and special interests. So, when I started to notice some psychiatric concerns and neurodevelopmental differences between me and my peers, I got to the bottom of it.

Even after a few trips to the child psychiatric ward during a few incidents in my teen years, I always ended up being blown away by how little the psych professionals seemed to know about diagnoses and treatment options. On top of that, because I had some background knowledge from my own research, it seemed to make psych professionals more dismissive of my concerns. Automatically, if you have done research that leads you to a diagnosis you think fits, you’re angling for a diagnosis just cause you want one and not cause you need the help. I have written a few of the particularly frustrating incidents below. Most incidents are from Johns Hopkins.

1. When my social anxiety and sensory issues were particularly debilitating, I brought up whether or not a psychiatric service dog would even be an option for me. To which the psych team looked at each other in confusion and then asked me, “What’s a service dog? You mean like a seeing eye dog for blind people?”
2. I brought up that I likely have Autism to the psychiatrist(?) assigned to me. She interviewed my parents and decided I didn’t fit the childhood criteria enough to fit the diagnosis, without interviewing me at all. Then, she tried to diagnose me with OCPD, and when I said I didn’t have those symptoms, she visibly deflated as if I had disappointed her
3. A different psychiatrist told me that even if I did have Autism, there wouldn’t be a point in him giving me a diagnosis because I’d be too high functioning for it to matter
4. I brought up to the therapist that I wanted to pursue a psych eval. She said, “What do you think they’ll find?” and I said, “depression”, then she actually laughed at me. I did get diagnosed with severe depression, obviously, so I’m not sure what her problem was

I’m not sure what the rules are for becoming a psych professional, but this track record is rough, and not nearly the worst I’ve seen. Please do better.

My guilty pleasure has always been romantic comedies and even though a lot of them fall in the girl and guy meet, they fall in love, something goes wrong/ misunderstanding occurs, they separate for a little bit and then they reconcile and live happily ever after, one of them stands out. 500 Days of Summer(spoiler warning even though the story isn’t even linear) is a story about a guy who meets and then falls in love with a girl who likes him back but doesn’t really want a relationship. It goes through a lot of different scenarios where eventually it doesn’t work out and he finds someone new at the very end of the movie. This movie is a perfect example of how the culmination of lived experiences can shape how you view love.

I am absolutely a romantic. I’ve been surrounded by love my entire life, my parents, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles all seemed to be in love and I wanted a piece. My first watch, I completely agreed with the main character. How dare this girl who expressed her feelings of not wanting a relationship with him end up not wanting a relationship with him. The whole point of the movie went over my head and they even tell you at the beginning. After a few more rewatches(I enjoy this movie a lot) and a little bit of growing as a person, I finally start to understand. And the whole reason I was able to understand why what happened wasn’t just one persons fault is because I’ve had more experiences with love since then. Perception of love can be so different from person to person and it’s most likely why love is so difficult.

The opening of the movie is of the main character and the girl’s upbringing, showing how the main characters perception of love was shaped from movies and music, stemming the hopeless romantic mindset while the girl’s perception of love was shaped by how her parents divorced when she was young which stemmed the cynical mindset and we see how their mindsets clash during the movie. It is just so interesting how much experiences and very little or subtle changes in a life can change so much about someone. Always keep a open mind and a open heart.

I look at myself in the mirror 

My prescribed vision has never been clearer

But my eyes start to blur as the tears roll down

I don’t feel beautiful, I feel like a cow

I look at myself in the mirror 

My prescribed vision has never been clearer

But my eyes start to search for every flaw that I have

The stretch marks on my skin, the hives on my back

A thought claws out from the back of my mind

“This body of mine needs its shaping relined”

Through tears I stare and poke and prod 

The origins of that horrible thought

At the end I find a whole vicious plot

To get me to surrender my joy

I will not

I look at myself in the mirror

Shaken, battered, bruised by the world

The expectations placed on a black man to be strong, savage, and fertile have gone too far

I break the chains that have held me down 

That prescription was wrong but I can see clearly now

They lied about my body to me 

They said big was worse and black was dirty

They pushed me to hate myself and for what?

So i could give them more money, be docile, unfree?

If they want a savage, then that they will see

It is savage to love yourself thin, thick, sharp as a diamond ring

They called my ancestors savage for doing the same thing

Black: Behold Limitless Anger and Cold Knife blades
Do I matter — or only when we’re at Dave & Busters?
Am I too dark for safety or too light for belonging?                                                                                            Will always be seen as armed and dangerous when your skins a weapon
Bodies

Disabled: Doubtfully Invisible Says All But Longing for Equal Deservance
No chair beneath me, but pain still builds its throne.
If they don’t see it, will they call me a fraud instead of human?

LGBTQIA+: Living Guilty Becuz They Quiet Individual Advocacy
I’m not confused — or am I?
My existence is not a debate;
I am a real (Wo)Man, whether they choke on the words or not.
Bodies

Fat: Fitting All Tropes
Every step, a verdict.
Every glance, a sentence.
They call it “the easy way out”                                                                                                   While I carry a lifetime of shame like armor I never asked for.

Jailed: Jacked And Incarcerated Living in Empty Darkness
Does dignity only belong to the unarrested?
Can I get common decency without starving for it?
Is a calendar cautious— or just another thing denied?
Bodies

Protested: Posting Radical Only Tweets for Everyone to See The Everlasting Death
The heat took everything, but their cameras took more                                                                Do you smell that?                                                                                                                    That’s a life unraveling while they chase the perfect angle.                                                           Did the flames illuminate enough for your feed?                                                                        Was someone’s final moment bright enough for you?
Bodies

After watching the United in Anger documentary and reading You Are Not Entitled to Our Deaths by Mia Mingus, it really made me sit down and think about how performative protest can be at times. I struggle to understand why that is, because the main foundation of every protest is the collective understanding of the mutual struggle that they have and the common cause of said struggle. For instance, the exclusion of disabled people in the talks surrounding COVID, as noted by Mingus, the documentary talks about how many people did not join in on the ACT UP protests until they received a diagnosis of their own. Likewise with the documentary mentioning how some of the AIDS reform was regressive because it was male-centered in how the disease can manifest itself, so women were still left out because some of the criteria that one would need to be able to get some benefits, like common illnesses that come along with a diagnosis, were not common among women, and they were still suffering. Even beyond those examples, looking at the women’s suffrage movement and how white women were hesitant to include black women, for fear that their demands would not be met. The beauty of protests is that people from different walks of life come together and no one is left out; their voices are not trampled over by other parties. Must we wait until we have a personal stake in something before it matters to us? What good is protest if we don’t bring everyone to the table?

It’s been 2 years since I’ve been to the doctor. 730 days for every part of my body to go wrong. But isn’t it always wrong if I know what I’ll be walking into at that doctor’s office? The wrongness of being fat.

If there is one thing I’ve learned from the discourses of this class, it’s that our bodies will forever be changing. So too will the conversation surrounding how we should exist in our bodies, if we should exist in them at all. Our bodies are marked by the same touch of vitality that gives us life, yet we are all subjected to its rule. Society demands it has the authority to rule over something so changing, so unruly. We know how this goes: Authority that demands really has no power at all. But the illusion of power proves authentic in our ignorant minds. If we can be convinced that are bodies need changing, need fixing, the authority that preludes us doesn’t need anything else. We have become the prisoners in our own mind. Change the word bodies, and the message continues to apply.

Let’s get back on track. The medicalization of fat bodies is the evil that I reference in this blog. If it wasn’t known before, we know now how people have been fighting for decades for the right to exist in their body indisputably. The Fat Underground of 1972 emerged after the 1967 protests in Central Park, where people (500 of them) gathered to eat, burn diet books, and ultimately exist as “loudly fat.” It is important to note that continuous efforts of fat equality isn’t just a result of societal ignorance — that is, even if society was completely accepting of all bodies, the conversation had in 1972 about bodies is not the same as in 2010, nor is it the same now. Our bodies are everchanging, and so is our body’s rhetoric.

The Fat Underground seemed to serve as rebellion, more so than the protests from before. This movement now had a target in hand, encompassed in the medicalization of fatness and those who aided in it: “Doctors are the enemy. Weight loss is genocide.” These words were cutthroat, and still carry weight with them (no pun intended). But how do these words help us now? Where does liberty and justice meet health and motive? It seems counterproductive for the fat community to reject all medical models by indirectly rejecting their health. It is based on the rational discomfort of stepping into a space that was not made for you, or me, or them. But I still did it. And so did you?

It has been 730 days since I’ve had a medical professional tell me what’s wrong with me, and yet I still sit with the guilt that I have no idea what is right with me. We can reject the pretenses that still make us small, but where does that leave us in terms of vitality? I conclude, in all two decades of my life, that if our medical models don’t serve us (not even just the fat, but the disabled, and the socially-determined “wrong) that we must create the spaces that uplift what is right with our body.

Maybe the action is not successful, but the rhetoric can be. If the Body Positivity Movement, outside of its target audience, is challenged by a fatphobic agenda, existence can no longer be the only protest. The voices behind the faces behind the bodies behind the fatness must coexist as one.

In 5 months, I’ll break my 2 year record. Here I come!