My bet is on Therapy Voodoo...
As I begin to write this post, I am sitting in the tiny afterthought of a waiting area at my therapist's office for the very first time. It smells vaguely of cleaning supplies and there's a hum of white noise all around. I'm not alone - there's a girl, seemingly in her early twenties (although I'm a terrible judge of age) nervously bouncing her leg as she stares at her phone. I'm consciously conquering the urge to do exactly the same thing. I'm berating myself for not bringing a book and for showing up so early, but maybe it's good to have a quiet moment of reflection...but my heartbeat keeps speeding up. I have no idea why I'm nervous; I know, intellectually, that this is a healthy thing to do - that it will help me, that I'm safe to say anything I want for the next hour - but that's not decreasing the size of the lump in my throat.
I've never seen a therapist before. It was offered to me as an option at age 16 when my parents finally divorced, but I shrugged it off. Therapy was something only crazy people did and I wasn't crazy, or even very upset, come to think of it. My mother was worried that I wasn't "dealing with it", that I was bottling up my emotions. She hadn't seen me cry about it and to her that was a necessary sign of emotional health. She forgot, however, that even though he and I weren't close, I was already very much like my father. Crying made me feel weak and full of failure and I knew already that splitting up was the correct decision for them. My brother had been away at college for the majority of the obvious decay of their marriage. He was saved from a lot of stress in that way, but unfortunately it took him completely by surprise when they sat us down and told us my father was moving out. It was obvious to me at that point that the "trial separation" was merely a step towards inevitable divorce, but I don't remember it ever hurting or upsetting me. It simply was.
Over a decade later, I still haven't fully explored the ways that my parents' relationship affected me growing up and how their divorce changed things in my teenage years, but I've done enough work to know that I really could have benefited from talking to a professional. So I'm not going to make the same mistake again. I'm not going to refuse available help, thinking that accepting it would make me weak, crazy, or less-than anything. I'm going to do this right from the start.
I find myself somehow unprepared to answer the obvious first question: "So," my therapist says brightly, after we shake hands "what brings you here today?" The lump in my throat seems to expand exponentially, and I sigh and look away from her, feeling like tears are already inevitable. A moment of shame washes over me that I can't seem to say what it is I need to say. I take a deep breath and say "So this is the point where everyone says they don't cry in front of people..." She nods, understandingly, picks up her pen and waits patiently.
The beginning of anything is always the hardest part. Emotional inertia is a bitch. I'm not sure if it was the preparation I had done leading up to this appointment, the feeling of actually sitting in that chair finally, or some kind of therapy voodoo, but I found the power to squeeze out a few words. Then a few more, and a few more. As she listens, she takes notes, she mirrors things I've thought privately to myself but never said out loud to anyone. It feels like she understands, like what I'm going through makes perfect sense to her. It's not a perfect start, but it is a start, and that's a win for the day. Small victories lead the way to big progress.
I leave feeling relieved, and vulnerable, and sad, and proud of myself, and a myriad other emotions. I know I can do this because I'm doing it for the right reason.
I'm finally doing it for me.
P.S. to end on a lighter note: I feel it's utterly appropriate that this appeared in the search results when I was looking for a cover image for this post.
It's a shockingly accurate depiction of how I imagine myself sitting in my therapist's office.
Meow.