My Personal Journey to Finding a Therapist and How I Got There

Hello everyone!

Long time no see. That is obviously on me, like duh. I have been having quite the journey while I have been away. I thought that it would only be fitting as I come back to kind of catch you all up on what exactly I have been doing.

In a nutshell: school, therapy, and work.

Now there will be more on the other two topics but as you guys can see I am going to share with you all my choice in going to therapy and how I got to that choice. I have had over 3 months of weekly sessions thus far with my therapist and I feel as if I am in a good enough place mentally to share my story.

It all started 7 years ago with my parent's divorce. I had just turned 15 and I had seen my parents really going through it with a separation, marriage counselors, and a growing distance for a few years prior. Suffice it to say I was not overly surprised when my father sat me down literally a day after Christmas and our family shopping day and said that they were going to separate permanently and the divorce process was going to start.

I will not front and say that I had any emotion about the entire situation. I really was just kind of numb.

Life did not stop around me and I was just trudging along with it.

A year had passed and I was just living life and trying to survive high school. Behind the scenes the divorce got messier and messier. It was as if there was pushback over every single item that was left behind and I was not even fought for once. The dog was fought over before me and Jonah (my little yorkie) was mine. I won him in a game of golf and where ever I went he would go.

It really does do something to you when you feel you are not even worth the time or effort to be asked for. It just started to weigh on my consciousness and over time it festered into self-hatred in terms of body image, personality, and personal achievement.

That is as much as I am comfortable with sharing publicly, but that gives a good idea about where my head was at. It was at the time that I was starting my sophomore year of high school. The divorce was finalized a year later and my head was done in about my senior year. I really got into the thick of my food addiction at that point and was suffering the physical consequences for those choices.

I had lost every label I thought defined me. Daughter. Student. Volleyball player. Writer.

All of it was gone in a blink of an eye.

Life seemed to think that was not enough.

My grandmother was taken from us in her sleep. She was my biggest cheerleader. She was the one who would support and raise me above all realistic expectations because she believed in me and wanted to see me succeed in everything and anything I set my mind to.

Towards the end of my years with her I had begun to resent going to see her simply because I did not believe that I was good enough. It was so heartless looking back but it was all born of not wanting to disappoint her when I said that the 'reality' of the situation was that I was not good enough and would never be good enough.

I had so many mixed emotions at her death. Guilt, grief, and emptiness all warred within my head. I didn't know which to let win and I couldn't deal with it all so I just decided to numb the pain the best way I knew how.

Eat myself sick.

So I ate.

And ate.

And ate.

My end goal was to get sick enough to not have to deal with life. To get in the hospital and maybe even farther. However further seemed so permanent an I could just never follow through with that line of thinking, but I sure did my best to at least get into a hospital bed.

Thankfully that was never the end result.

There was a light at the end of the tunnel for this story and while there were many spirals, breakdowns, and just plain bad days I was able to come out of it with a new hope for a brighter future and the possibility of good tomorrows to come.

Now this story has a lot of loose ends and many things that were not even written. Whether for the sake of brevity or wanting to keep some sense of privacy is really up to the author, but if she were to step in for a moment, and she will, she would say it truly is a matter of both.

The conclusion of this story is nonexistent.

I will never truly be over with this journey or everything that was experienced on it. It truly never is over. You just live, learn, survive and try to thrive with what life throws at you It is not always fair, it is not always your fault, and you may not always be able to do it on your own.

And that is okay.

Life is a journey that is hard and you were never meant to live it alone. Keep a good support system around you. Allow yourself to enjoy the little things. Don't be too hard on yourself for things that are out of your control. And remember that you have people that care. You matter.

I know that a lot of these things are 'words of wisdom' in our society and it seems rather vague and shallow. You want to know the truth?

The truth is there is too much nuance for there to ever be a direct sentiment just for you. Each person is different and there is no one situation like another. However, there are elements that are similar and you can find your own community and support system within that.

Life is hard and sometimes there are no answers. You just have to choose whether or not you want to let it beat you.

I have already taken up so much of your time if you have gotten this far. Thank you so much for taking up however many hours (I cringe to think how close to the truth that is) reading this.

I hope you have an amazing day and that you do something nice for yourself. See ya!

Some "light" reading: I Faced My Fear By Falling In Love With You

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