Mood by Scale [Updated]

One thing everyone in the hospital notices about me is the weight loss. And yet, inside, I haven't lost a pound.

You see, Seroquel is the devil's dust. It made me gain ninety pounds (a woman from NAMI at the local county once gave a talk to our unit, G2P. She gained 100 pounds on clozapine, the drug that I'm currently taking and the one that allows me to sleep through the night). It helped me so much with my sleep and with my symptoms, but it wrecked my confidence. I refused to have sex weighing that much. I quietly put myself away. I wrapped myself up tightly. I was for no one.

I went from being so thin that I didn't have my periods (I am trying to figure out some other explanation for why I wasn't having them, but as soon as I gain ten pounds, I got them back, so?) to being clinically obese.

My relationship with food remains fraught. I stare every day at my mother, who is underweight, deal with her issues around food ("Oh, I'm not hungry," she will say. "Oh, I'm stuff," she will say after eating very little. "I can't gain weight because I don't gain it in the right places.").

My day's mood is set by the scale that I step on every morning in the corner of my room. It's a bit like appearing before a hanging judge. Waiting. Watching. Knowing. Forgetting all the work it took just to get here. Doesn't matter because I already gain four pounds back. Gained it. Lost it. Over and over.

If Stanford was paying attention, which they are not, they would have noticed that for lunch yesterday, I had a dark cupcake, banana pudding and two (small) chocolate cookies. It's not that I want to gain all the weight back, I'm studious about my calories--always--but I find the stresses of the hospital weighing on me. The anticipation that I should be getting better (the everyday interview from the psychiatric resident of any and all signs of that pending fact), and the daily disappointment when I shake my head and say, "I'm still the same. I'm still depressed." 

The resident's dissatisfaction and frustration has been at times palpable. If she gives up, if she runs out of answers, what happens then?