Today there's an article in the Metro, a daily newspaper in Philadelphia, about this blog. The guy who wrote the piece, Josh Cornfield, was very nice and professional. I enjoyed talking to him even though I knew I was being less articulate than I wanted to be because I was distracted. Vince was waiting for me in the car outside, and I felt like I had to speak very quickly. I figured, "Well, maybe Josh isn't a fast typist, in which case maybe he'll only get a few things I'm saying." I assumed the piece would be very tiny. (What I learned today is that Josh is indeed a very fast typist.)

Then he asked if a Metro photographer could come take my photo—while Vince waited in the car some more. (Vince had to be nice about it because it was my birthday, and on my birthday he has to be in a good mood no matter what.) I was wearing an unflattering bra, my hair was frizzed out, I had no makeup on and I was bloated from snack foods consumed during my computer training. I said, "Well, I'm kind of having a bad hair day," but I knew I'd have to get the photo taken. I'm a journalist. I know how the game is played. I hoped it would run as small as a postage stamp.

Instead the photo is 3 1/2 by 7. It's huge. I'm facing away from the camera, making my chin lose all definition. My arms bulge like sausages against the photo's frame. My boobs are a shelf. My hair looks like it was cut by a blind man. It looks better online, but the printed version, which is cropped against those arms, is washed out and ill-defined. If I were photographer Rikard Larma, I'd be frustrated by how my shots looked on newsprint.

I asked a co-worker if that's what I look like. He said I looked fat in the photo but that I don't look like that in real life. Well, at least someone knows the truth. I feel badly to learn how shallow I am. Why should I care what the photo looks like? But I look at it and I think, "Who's going to go to that blog? The blog of Sausage Arms?"

Yesterday I was able to contextualize to make myself feel better. But today I'm kind of worried, from a medication standpoint. If it's the Effexor that's causing this weight gain, what will I do? Is it a side effect I can live with? It seems incredibly depressing to me to be overweight, but not clinically depressing. Effexor brought me back from an abyss that I simply can't afford to slip into again. And I'm willing to deal with its side effects, whether loss of libido or night sweats. But am I going to be fat? I'm not sure I can handle that.

Many people who take psychotropic meds complain about weight gain. And many prescribing doctors deride their concerns. But what could be more essentially important than one's appearance? When the meds are working, we forget how horrible it was to be without them, and problems like weight gain come to the foreground.

I'll never again say, "What's 10 or 20 pounds if you stop hallucinating?" It's not always an acceptable tradeoff.

Blog’s aim: Break down stigma of mental illness