Weight gain. Weight gain in your face and neck. Irritability. Feeling “muted” overall. Loss of conversational filters.

You can read all the pill bottles you want, experiencing the symptoms makes you seriously reconsider just leaning into your mental illness to avoid gaining weight and becoming meaner.

Every week was a different Jess. I was lucky because I had a best friend who I worked with, and she was someone who could keep an eye on me. She knows me better than most people and could notice very subtle changes in my demeanor.

Three prescriptions into two months, I pretty much walked around with road rage. Foot rage? Walking rage?

“This person is walking too slow, they need to move.” “Is this person seriously complaining again?” “I’m going to point out that behavior because that is not okay. “

Let’s make something very clear here: these behaviors were very subtle, and mostly only internal. However, when you go from depressed and, I-will-go-out-of-my-way-to-balance-the-emotions-of-the-room to “nah,” it is a striking personality shift for some people. No longer were my alarms going off at the slightest change in atmosphere, no, now they were going off and I would take out the batteries of the smoke detector.

No one explains that creating boundaries (whether purposeful or presciption-al (?)) is shocking to people. Swinging from being overly nice to being normal is shocking.

Now I was fine with being firm with people and mirroring attitudes. I didn’t take it personally anymore when people would be rude, I would just tell them the behavior wasn’t okay. *SCOFF* HOW DARE SHE!

My friendships have shifted in ways out of my control. People have been turned off by my new-found firmness. Others have liked that I’m more honest. Most people will probably say they haven’t noticed anything.

For the most part, other people would feel their feelings around me and I wouldn’t attach myself to them by trying to help carry them. I let other people carry them by themselves because I didn’t want to strap them on my back. They aren’t mine? What is this freedom? It’s REVOLUTIONARY. I wish people told me this is what it’s like to be normal with healthy boundaries.

Every time I pop open a bottle of Hendrix gin I lift it up to toast my triumphs. Maybe I’m not getting put into an ambulance anymore, but with every progression comes small wins. I may gain weight, and be more firm. Irish-goodbye more often. Avoid toxic people (I’m fantastic at the you’re-dead-to-me) like the plague. But overall I still give too many shits and I’m enjoying the rediscovery of myself. I get to experience my life in a retrograde fashion; growing in new areas that don’t exist in the version of me with mental illness.