Maartje Steuten
I’ve been taking medication for years because my brain reabsorbs too much serotonin too quickly. Serotonin is a body’s own substance that ensures that brain and nerve cells can communicate optimally with each other.
Together with other neurotransmitters and hormones such as cortisol, (nor)adrenaline and dopamine, this substance influences how you feel and behave. With a shortage of serotonin, it is difficult to get pleasure from the activities and people around you. Your brain will also simply perform less well at school or work. This leads to excessive anxiety and depressed feelings, which eventually paralyze you. You can compare it to insulin that allows blood sugar to be absorbed by all cells in the body, allowing you to function. A shortage of insulin causes too high a sugar level in the blood and too low a sugar level in the cells, which can lead to unconsciousness, epileptic seizures or a coma.
Weight gain
Unlike diabetics, I am regularly treated to unsubstantiated third party opinions about me taking medication. Not that I’m blaming this, but my meds have the nasty side effect of making me fat. And that is visible, in contrast to my psychological complaints that I usually know how to mask well. After years of laughing along at comments about my weight gain, I got fed up and explained that this is (at least in part) due to my medication. That it is not a choice to take these drugs but of vital importance, just like with diabetes. That I would have preferred to remain slim, but that my will to live and function still prevails over my appearance.
Pain
Unfortunately, the priority of my environment is often different. I patiently endure shock reactions from people who haven’t seen me for a long time, and I try to avoid embarrassing remarks by making a joke about my increased size myself. That’s so far. What really hurts me is that people who know about my medication, and the reason why I take it, often can’t resist making a derogatory comment about my body. Recently I was compared to a well-known overweight mayor (while the good man has a career that you say to yourself and has proven to be very valuable to our national interest during the corona pandemic). Instead of defending myself (and him too), I laughed off this comment because there is simply no way to fight such a disqualification based on looks. Because it’s as disrespectful as it is stupid.
I feel tempted to start announcing all that I have accomplished and achieved over the past few years, but it is too much of an honor for me to defend myself for something I can do little about. Then I would stoop to a level of superficiality that I am thankfully transcended. I am so much more than that.
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