The D word

So I’m going to meet my therapist tomorrow.  Surprisingly enough, I haven’t been as anxious about it as you’d usually think, especially because I’ve never done anything like this before.  Probably because there’s a big part of my brain that says “well, you’re not gonna say anything, anyway, so there’s nothing to worry about.”  I’ve told two people about my OCD now, and I’ve written about it, and let me tell you, writing is ONE HUNDRED times easier than saying these things out loud, to an actual person.

I saw this video on YouTube today, and it I’m not gonna lie, I started crying.  And I don’t cry easily.

You should really watch it, but in it, he talks about depression, and how we approach it.  It hit so close to home.  I had severe depression for about a year when I was fourteen, and I’ve been battling it off and on ever since.  Mental health is something you just don’t talk about.  It’s not something people can see and understand.  I never told anyone about what I went through as a teenager.  Partly because I believed that this was “normal teenager stuff”, and that nobody else was talking about it, everybody else was dealing with it, so obviously I had to, too.

But, in hindsight, I think it’s probably not “normal teenager stuff” to sit on your bed, staring at the wall, all day, every day, for months, asking yourself over and over again “what’s wrong with me?”  If I knew what was wrong, I could figure out how to fix it, but there was nothing, nothing broken except my head.  So, I had an empty pit, in the middle of my chest, widening and deepening every day, and I couldn’t talk about it because you don’t tell people you’re sad, or that you can’t feel anything.  You can only tell people why you’re sad or angry or hurting, because then people will say “Oh, I’m so sorry, let me help you fix it.”  But you can’t fix something that isn’t broken, or at least, you can’t fix something that’s broken that you can’t see.  So I told no one.  I told no one about the suicide note I hid under my mattress, even though my little sister asked me what I was burning in the kitchen sink.  I told no one about those days that I curled up in a ball, wishing I could just stop breathing.

I still can’t talk about it.  The only reason I can write this here, is because I keep telling myself that no one will read it, or they won’t know it’s me, anyway, and they can pretend I’m just making it up, because it’s easy to read about these things when they’re not real.  Every once in a while, I tell myself that someone, somewhere, will read this, and they will find hope, find help, find strength, find something.

But how, how in the WORLD, can I do this for me?  I can go through a fair amount of suffering if I think it could help someone else.  And I can put myself through a fair amount of suffering, just because.  But when it comes to this... I could never ask for help.  It’s my number one unbreakable rule.  You DON’T tell people there’s anything wrong.  You DON’T tell people you’re hurting.  You suck it up, and try to figure it out on your own, and if you can’t, then that’s just too freaking bad.

You’re probably wondering, after everything I just said, why exactly am I going to go see a therapist?  It’s kind of a long story.  A really, really long story.  I may or may not share some of the details later, but to put it in one sentence: it wasn’t really my choice.  It’s kind of an exaggeration to say that I’m being “forced into therapy,” because it actually is still my choice.  I don’t have to go.  But I will.  Because I need help.  I feel like a complete failure, because I couldn’t or wouldn’t do this on my own.  This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, but I’m doing it.

I actually had a different point with this, but now it’s late, and I’ve got to prepare for my “big day” tomorrow. I'll follow up with this later.

Wish me luck,

Penny