Author: Rossy Gil

My first month on Wellbutrin.

I have always been so big on mental health. On doing all that you can to get better. But I was also someone who thought if I talk about it enough maybe one day it’ll go away. I have been struggling since the birth of my son. My life changed. I wasn’t able to do the same things. I was responsible for another human being. Me. Someone who could barely take care of herself. Even at 27, I felt like a teen mom. I figured because it was postpartum depression, I would eventually just get over it. I realize that it was so much more than that. I finally sat down with my thoughts and realized that it was so much bigger. The only thing that postpartum did was give me the time to sit down and truly think about all the things that were wrong. I wrote a whole book about it. (Go buy it. It’s on Amazon.) I tried so many things. Psychedelic therapy, that helped me learn what was wrong. But I did not use that information for anything. I didn’t use that knowledge to start fixing anything. I lost the weight, assuming that all my sadness and all my depression was because I was a size that I had never been before. 50 pounds later I was skinny, but I was still depressed.

My struggles with weight loss and self love.

I have always struggled with my body image. Even before the baby when I was smaller, I never felt skinny enough, pretty enough, always felt like something was missing. Growing up in a weight obsessed culture didn’t help either. Hispanic culture loves using your looks as a form of endearment, or lack there of. Either you’re too fat or you’re too skinny. “Gordita or Flaca” It’s like Goldilocks trying to be accepted by the Latino 3 bears but nothing she does is enough. Before I had my son I was 160lbs, a size 8, a small frame, and perky breast. Sounds great, but I still didn’t feel pretty then. I felt that I could be smaller. I would go to the club and compare myself to those bodies and go home feeling terrible about myself. It wasn’t just weight, my hair was never long enough, my nose wasn’t pointy enough. However, I still went out, I still wore the cute outfits. Nobody knew the struggles because to someone else, I was probably the body they wished they had. It got bad a couple years ago. After the baby, but not because of the baby. My case was never a “struggle to snap back”, I did. I lost all the weight after I gave birth to my son. My body went back to what it was, kinda. I had bigger hips and a bigger butt this time. That sounds amazing right?! I stayed active during my pregnancy so I didn’t gain much extra weight. The struggle began later on. I developed a terrible relationship with food in the middle of my depression and it was horrible.

When I was in high school, I got my heart ripped to shreds a few days before prom. I was destroyed. As a youngin, your first heartbreak is probably the most painful because for however long the relationship was, you made your entire life about that person so when you break up, you swear your world is ending. I cried really bad the first night. I woke up out of my sleep and woke my sister up in the process. In her tiredness, my sister said “You get three days. Cry it out, kick, scream, listen to sad music, whatever you need, but you only get three days.” That seemed extremely impossible but she was right.

If you don’t know what neurodivergent means it’s just someone whose brain processes information differently than most people. Things like ADHD, autism, OCD and Tourette’s are examples of this. It’s actually really common but so many people go undiagnosed. It’s not a terrible thing to have, it just makes regular things a little more difficult and annoying. My big sister has ADHD and she compares it to having squirrels in her head that make it difficult to concentrate. She works a full time job and is a small business owner too. Despite her ADHD, she still gets shit done even if it’s a little harder. It’s not a crippling disease and you don’t have to feel bad for people who suffer from this. As common as this may be, it is actually insane sometimes to learn that most peoples brains don’t operate on what neurodivergent people consider normal. Not everyone hears one hundred voices, not everyone is triggered by a lot of noises or struggles to concentrate. Most people are… normal.

This year I turn 34. When I think back to the woman I was when I was in my 20s, besides immediately thinking what the heck was wrong with me, I also think about all the lessons I learned during those years. I was a party animal. Growing up in New York City it’s hard to miss that scene. Teen bashes had kids outside at a very young age. My mom did not play that so even though I was at every house party my friends had, my true party years didn’t start til I turned 18. I had a job so she allowed me to do whatever I wanted, in moderation. (Hispanic parents am I right?) I partied my ass off. I created an alter ego and all that just so that I could excuse my behavior everywhere I went. I wrote that blog, go read it. It was fun, but the lessons I had to learn along the way were far from that.

Trigger Warning: Creepy uncles, sexual abuse, child abuse.

I don’t understand why we keep letting men get away with this. This one is going to be for both men and women. The covering up of the creepy uncles, the pervy neighbors, the “he was drunk”. It’s so bad. As the secrets of my family have unfolded the entire month of January, I have realized just how bad men are protected in society. Statistics show that 93% of teens know their perpetrators and 34% of them are family members. Okay, now let’s talk about it. This means that in most families there is at least one creepy uncle. I have creepy uncles, and knowing this, it means that a bunch of other people in the family knew he was creepy too. So this 34%, let’s say about 20% knew the uncle was a problem and let him around the kids anyways.

The truth about postpartum depression and how it doesn’t end a year after birth.

I had a very traumatic pregnancy. I took forever to dilate, ended up having a C-section, the anesthesia wore off while I was being stitched and I couldn’t hug my baby because we both had a fever. I was defeated. Somehow, that was the easiest part. Postpartum depression kicked my ass. It didn’t last a year, it lasted three. I called my doctor at the 8 week mark and told him I was really sad and he told me “it’s too late for it to be postpartum depression, I can’t help you. Just try to be happy.” Whatever. So here I was on a mission to beat PPD. It was fucking me up though. I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know how to properly connect with my son. I couldn’t love this new version of me. I became so depressed that I felt the only way out of that was to die. It sounds so dramatic but seriously, I did not see any way out of that pain. I had lost all the weight pretty quickly but then, I gained it all back. I lost all my friends cause naturally, nobody really wants to be your friend anymore when you have responsibilities and shit. We moved to Florida and I thought sunshine would make it better. It didn’t. It made it worse.