The Rapids: Navigating therapy and depression

Some of the greatest writers are the ones who bare it all. The ones who lead you into the depths of characters or the ones brave enough to let you into the depths of their own souls. To write is to bare it all, to tell the naked truth. It is to put to paper your deepest feelings and thoughts. I am not very good at giving speeches but I sure can put my pen to paper. My goal as a writer is to make you feel things, to read things, the very things people won’t talk about. The very things I fear will cause ridicule. In order to be true to my love I must bare it all. Sobriety comes in many forms. The most popular form of sobriety involves the abstinence of alcohol or drugs. It is rare to think of sobriety as sobriety of your mind. However, many of us are walking around with inebriated consciousness full of wretched thoughts and memories that intoxicate us beyond repair. There might be desperation for that sobriety, the help to get out of those toxic thoughts and memories. There might be an addiction to this intoxication. In my case I believe I was drunk off the depressive state I’ve been in. I believe I’ve suffered from depression and definite anxiety for a very long time. I believe sobriety of the mind is a thing more difficult than weaning one’s self off alcohol or drugs. How do you stop yourself from believing all the bad things you’ve told yourself or been told? For many years I rolled my eyes at the idea of therapy. Many people spoke to me about its benefits and this and that and the other. I rolled my eyes. I said I don’t need that. I’m not crazy. It was not a place I wanted to venture. I had tried it once. The intern I saw at our student center painted me 50 Shades of Crazy. I suppose I scared her. You can’t just casually mention suicide and cutting to someone and not expect them to wig out. My therapy has consisted of the following: alcohol, rage, music, poetry, the gym, yoga, prayer, crazy conversations with God, and many times my friend’s ears. I’m sure I’ve made those ears bleed. Particularly I’ve made hearts bleed as they watched me not take advice or act like I had everything together. Perhaps they thought I did truly have it all together. I’ll let you in on a secret-NO ONE has anything together!! This New Year I took a leap of faith, a last resort. I stepped into the office and they handed me a clipboard with tons of paperwork. So my journey began. In front of me was a list, it read please check all that apply: Death of friend Death of family member Work related stress End of relationship Financial issues Legal issues Illness Family issues DEPRESSION The list went on and on. I felt compelled to leave the clipboard in the seat and get up and leave. I sat there for a while recalling the past few years. Now fast forward to the past year. I checked off almost the entire list. I sat there as I took it in- that all these things had happened to me, to people I knew, they happened. They existed in my life. And I was still standing. I was still breathing. I took a big breath as I was led down a hallway to another office. I took yet another huge breath. As I sat in his office and he introduced himself I could feel my heart thumping harder and faster. My mouth was as dry as the Sahara. As he reviewed each line item they recalled each event as an assessment I swallowed hard. One by one I admitted and described each thing. Sigh by sigh I felt relieved. Admission is the biggest relief in the world. When you admit who you are and what has happened that is the first small breath that comes of relief. Your body changes, you start to ease. Perhaps it means you are truly breathing for the first time in eons. When you realize you are accepted with all that you have admitted, now that’s when the storm really begins. When you come to acceptance of what has occurred, the choices you’ve made, the things you have caused; that is when the flood begins. You realize you are sailing out in the middle of a vast ocean on a makeshift raft all by yourself in a storm. You are pushing against the torrential current cascading down the waterfall of life. As the water rises, as the storm rages on what do you do? Do you drown? Do you survive? Do you thrive? I believe you do all of the above. I’ve drowned so many times I should be dead. I’ve risen so many times I know that there is someone other than me pulling me out of the dredges-the deep dark pits I’ve been in. And just like that I’ve climbed out of the pit and into a garden where the day is starting to break. Then just as soon as it began my first session was over. Soon it was a new day. The day came for my first day of my group therapy. I looked around much like the first day of my math class in college. My eyeballs darted around. I attempted to make myself cozy. Then we were told we would introduce ourselves. I felt my throat go dry, I wanted to run. As I listened to each and every person, I felt like hugging each one of them. I felt like someone understood me and they felt the same. If you think that therapy is something for “crazy” people think again. Therapy is for the broken, the tattered, worn, very human masses. People tell me I’m strong and I just don’t understand. But you were given this life because you were strong enough to live it. So are you ready? Are you ready to live? Get ready because this is the beginning, the beginning of my story. It is the story of the raft I began to build to handle the rapids of life. Stay Tuned