Last year, one of the discs in my lumbar spine extruded, which means, if the disc is a jelly donut sandwiched between two vertebrae, the donut itself squashed flatter, causing the raspberry jelly center to sploodge out, irritating the nearby nerves.
Added body weight can put pressure on these discs, though none of my doctors or physical therapists have told me to lose weight.
When I was 37 years old, I began taking an SSRI to manage my anxiety disorder. After taking the medication for 13 years, I’ve gained 70 pounds. I am thankful that this disc injury happened to me after my father died, because otherwise, it would have been another ticked box in his list of why a bigger body is the enemy of all enemies.
Of course, I would do anything to help my back feel better, but I’ve learned it’s impossible for me to lose weight while on the SSRI meds. That leaves me thinking that the only way to lose any weight, to help my back, would be to stop taking them. But doing so could very well mean that the anxiety will come crashing back.
There must be a better way.
The anxiety was so debilitating in my twenties and thirties, I couldn’t leave the house without my stomach turning to jello and my bowels buzzing. Fifteen years of feeling sick before going anywhere, of trying to stop my heart from smashing itself against my ribs, of trying to take a deep breath.
My breath always seemed to stop, squeezed in my upper chest, refusing to go lower. In movies, on TV, even in doctors’ offices, people always tell someone who is panicking, Just breathe.
You breathe, fucker.
You breathe while you’re trying to find a bucket or a bag in case you barf or shit yourself on the subway. You breathe while you’re so far under water you can no longer see the surface. Go ahead, try it. You breathe.
Breathing is for amateurs.
I remember many times, at a restaurant with Steve, while wearing my normal skin and smile, while eating my food, when suddenly a wave of terror would leave me nauseated, cold, awash in nightmares while my eyes were open. Steve would be talking to me and I would go blank, paralyzed, not sure if my next move would be puking or hiding under the table, followed by the desperate thought that I needed to go home now, before I lose my shit! Literally.
One time, driving to teach an acting class at the community college, I was so sick and terrified that I kept turning around to go home, all the while screaming at myself that I was defective, unable to do a simple thing like teach a class. That day, the only option left was going home.
There was no breathing then.
And no way to explain to myself, let alone someone else, why it would take me four days to work up the courage to go to Trader Joe’s. It baffled me, the not knowing what was happening back then. I was born in 1972 and didn’t truly understand what an anxiety disorder was, or know that I had one, until 2009.
Not until I was thirty-seven years old did I begin treatment. And it took me months to start taking the SSRI—because I was too anxious to take my anxiety meds.
But finally, the first pill was swallowed, and four months later, I understood what the doctor had meant when she said, about my anxiety symptoms: “You don’t have to feel like this.”
The joy at leaving the house without the toilet seat imprinted on my butt, was unlike anything I had felt before. The freedom of going to dinner with Steve, and being able to enjoy the whole meal. Or being able to go to an audition, to rehearsal, to the grocery store. Or to teach a class or travel, all without hesitation. So many miracles.
But then, after a few more months, the hunger crept in, the cravings. I couldn’t stop eating, no quantity too great, no calorie too high. There was no sating the hungry teeth that jawed and waggled for more.
With all that eating came the inevitable jiggles, thigh dimples, mountainous flesh, clothes that suddenly didn’t fit, followed by shame, a desire to hide and stay hidden. Fear of seeing people I hadn’t seen in a long time, because they might not recognize me. Or the horror that they might recognize me, only to have their eyes widen, and their faces rigor in embarrassment at the change in me.
I imagined them saying, “She really let herself go. She used to be so pretty.”
I’m on a seesaw, at a table playing that game with the cups, where there’s a nugget of diamond under one of them. That game where the three cups are repeatedly switching places in front of your eyes, so it’s impossible to know which cup hides the diamond.
That’s what I’m trying to choose: the cup with the diamond under it. The cup that runneth over. There is never a diamond under all three cups. I can’t have my cake and eat it, too. I must choose: medication and weighing more; or anxiety and weighing less.
I cannot have all the diamonds. Cannot have my former body without having the anxiety. Cannot be anxiety-free, without the mammoth flesh thundering underneath me.
One diamond. Pick a cup. And don’t forget to breathe.
received her Master of Arts degree in educational theater from New York University. Her script “Maze” reached the Quarter Finals of the Academy Nicholl Fellowship for Screenwriting in 2007. She was an actor and theater teacher for 20 years in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Charlotte, and San Francisco. Jocelyn’s love for cats and dogs led her to create Boo Boo’s Best, a successful treat company that she sold in 2022. Her writing is published in Steam Ticket and MacQueen’s Quinterly.
