wow what a timely topic! My birthday was Saturday and just a year ago, I finally made the call to make my first appointment. The night before, I had a royal meltdown and was texting my friend to come get me. I really thought I was losing my mind. One of my adult students (who is also a therapist) recommended a collegue but I hadn't decided to call til then. I couldn't live like that any longer.

So I made the appointment, which wasn't for 3 more weeks. Long enough to talk myself in and out of going many many times. And to look her up online and find the group she works with is very religiously based. And some kind of vague homophobic comments not from her personally but something connected in a different website. So I was pretty worried about going in the first place, not sure if anyone could help me anyway and then the religious stuff... But I felt bad enough that I went anyway.

That first time, I took one of the depression screening tests and hardly surprisingly, was off the top end of the scale. There was some various paperwork and just basically talking about me in general. What issues was I having and how was it affecting my life. I've had chronic depression my whole life, with another major depression last summer that sent me in finally.

I'd recently moved across the country and was having trouble at my job. I also recently came out to a few people, including my best friend at the time who freaked out and wouldn't talk to me for months. She is gay too, she's open about it so it was a huge blow to me that she ran away. Anyway there was a lot going on outside my head that was only making it worse. I thought everyone hated me at work and didn't really have any other friends but one.

I remember towards the end of the talk, she asked what didn't I like about myself. And I shocked myself but not being able to come up with really anything. Thinking about it later, that was probably because I didn't like ANYTHING at that point, so nothing stood out.

I had a funky night the other day, thinking about all this stuff again and reading back through my journal from last year. And feeling bad for the sorry little thing I was and all the years I wasted along the way. Reading through the first couple months of my journal was hard, I used to come home so upset from stirring stuff up and picking at old scabs. At first, I had to just sleep when I got home to shut off my brain. That went away after awhile though.

But without all that, I wouldn't be where I am now. Which is in (yet another) new state, gone back to school and doing really well at it. I wish it hadn't taken me all these years to get here but I'm happy with where I am now.