HEALING AND RECKONING WITH GLP-1 MEDICATIONS
Oct 21, 2025

This weekend, I took a trip to visit my mom and half-siblings in Seattle. It was a lovely trip.
Much of the last times I saw my mom, lingering impacts of our once-strained relationship loomed over my head. The fears of volatile emotions coming back with her divorce from a highly abusive second husband, her stress-exacerbated symptoms of autoimmune disorders, and her weight gain those symptoms made inevitable. My childhood was full of those volatile emotions. But just because you prepare for these things to never change does not mean you do not wish for it, and it doesn't even mean they never will.

My mom was different, better. Ghosts of her trauma, scars formed long before my time, were still visible in the form of... somewhat weak emotional regulation skills, but even that had improved. She was actually willing to accept help now. None of these changes necessarily hit you over the head. They didn't scream at you in bright, neon lights, "I'VE CHANGED!" All except one.
She was shockingly thin.

Was this a good change? I wasn't sure. Much of the weight was due to medical problems and mental distress. But some of it... wasn't. I knew in her past she had been very thin; at my age she was 100lbs soaking wet, but that doesn't quite seem healthy either. But thinking about my own weight gain over the last year, a positive thought entered my mind:
"Maybe being free from the worst of her stress, having more access to the outdoors, and having more time to be mindful with meals truly made that much of a difference.
Maybe that's my future, too, once I'm out of Texas and move to Denver, go back to school, am free from this job.
Oh, what a miracle!
I can see, biologically, tangibly, the impacts of stress on weight in my bloodline!
I can see what peace will do for me!"
That was, until I went looking for spare toilet paper, and found the small box of syringes and GLP-1 medication under the bathroom sink.
God damn it.

I refuse to take GLP-1 medications. I do not want to. I can't quite explain why, but it feels like a defeat. I want to take less medications, not more. I don't just want my body to work for me, I want to work with my body. At least to some extent... I take mental health medication, but someday I would like to stop that. With how deliriously demanding my job is, and how often it makes me spiral, I can't do it now, but I hope I can get those systems back in order eventually. And obviously I'm on HRT, a constant and permanent stalemate with my sex, but at least with testosterone and progesterone, I am simply adding to the mix, not restricting or blocking or overriding. And for these reasons I obviously do not fault anyone who wants to take any medication of any kind, including GLP-1s. I just... don't want to. I just want to be healthier, feel healthier, and whatever my weight does, it does.