Therapy Sessions : Depression.

CHAPTER 2: DEPRESSION

"I'm suprised you're here."

"Well that's a shitty way of greeting your client doc."

Ugh. So maybe I deserve that.

I've bailed on my therapy sessions for the past two weeks ( I was busy!) and maybe I forgot to give Dr. Siya a heads up. Maybe.

She gives me this pointed look, like I should know better and fuck okay, I should.

"I'm sorry."

She nods. This lady right here my friends is a woman of few words.

"Why?" She asks

"Why, what?" 

She gives me the look again. God I hate this.

"I was busy."

"Okay."

Silence. 

She looks at me and I look at her and now it's a matter of who's going to look away first. 

I try, but it's me. I get up from my place on the settee and at first I think I'll leave, but then I just end up pacing the office, nervous all of a sudden with a kind of panic growing in my chest.

I turn to face her.

"I wasn't busy," i start, "I was sure that I'd be here, for the two sessions I missed, but I just found ways to put it off till it was completely out of my mind that I had somewhere else to be. " She puts down her pen she's been writing with and gestures to the lounge chair behind me.

"Have a seat Freda." 

I do. 

She takes a look at her notes and then looks back up at me

"The last time you were here, you talked about being depressed."

I see.

"I said that I might be going through depression, yes."

"You might?"

"I mean I'm not a doctor. I can't just decide I'm depressed right?"

She gives that a thought. Then she smiles a bit. I'm happy to be as amusing as she wants.

"You're a joker aren't you?"

"Sometimes, yes."

"And you don't like to give straight answers, do you?"

"Not really."

"So tell me what it's like."

"Sorry?"

"Tell me how you feel when you think you might be depressed."

I grow still. I'm a talker. I can't deny it. I can go on and on about anything, as long as I've got something to say. But I hate talking about shit like this. I don't want to talk about it. I'm about to say so, but I stop. Bottling it all in is what got me here in the first place, I think (I really don't know what possessed to come here). Plus I literally pay Dr. Siya to listen to me.

"It's more of how I feel."

"Tell me how you feel."

I breathe.

"I wake up and I don't know how to get on with my day," i start, "I hate the fact that I'm awake, I hate the fact that I have to get up and I hate that that is how I feel once I open my eyes on most mornings. I don't want to get up and I'm overcome with this sudden urge to die because this can't be my life. I can't wake up and hate myself for it."

I've got her attention right now. She wanted me to talk and now I won't stop. She wants to know I'll tell her. Sbe wants to know how I feel? Fine. She can hear it. She can try and make sense of it. Let her hear what lives inside me.

"I wake up, and it hurts to be alive. I'm in pain and half of the time I don't know what causes it. But when I do its even worse, because I'll kick myself for all the ways I've caused myself this hurt and it becomes a vicious cycle of self blame and self hatred." 

I choke on that last sentence. It's embarrassing honestly. This urge to cry. I'm no good at crying. I hate it. Somewhere along the lines of my existence I think I might have confused tears with weakness. But I don't care about what my therapist wants to say about that. I won't tell her, and I won't cry damn It.

"My life's a big mess. And I don't know who I  am, or what I want. Maybe if I knew that shit, I'd know how to deal with all this. But It's like coming into a mind that is made to betray you, because some days I feel like I've figured it out. Heck, I could go months thinking I've figured it all. I could be happy. But it always come back. My mind reduces me to nothing, until I'm empty for all my wanting, until I feel stupid for what i thought was progress. Until all I want to be is dead."

I'm panting and I'm on the veryge of screaming. Because this doesn't even sound like depression, it sounds like a curse. Like a sickness. To be so put together; to be such a jester on the outside and to carry so much on the inside. 

"On the days that I think I might be depressed, I don't want to be around anyone. I want to wallow in my sorrows. I want to revel in it. I fuck off everyone around me and I drown myself in all these feelings. I sacrifice myself to my hurt because it is a living thing inside me, built from years of hiding, of shame, of anger, of abuse and of wanting. God, the wanting. It's the worst of it. I let myself be held in it. Till the point where it's almost too much to take, theb I force myself back together and it's unto the pretending. And let me just say that stupid damage control doesn't last very long."

I look at her. I feel like I'm reading out of a book. I feel like I'm talking about someone else. But it's me. Little 'ol me.

Everything is numb. I'm aware that there are tears running down my cheeks, but there's no sob coming out of me. It's all so very silent, my tears. They flow so easily, I couldn't stop them even if I tried.

She comes to me, a silent question in her eyes. I shrug. She can do what she wants. She folds me in. I don't know if that's normal. Do therapists hug their patients?

I don't fucking care. I let myself be held. And I go on for the final lap.

"On the days I think I'm depressed," I whisper to her, "I'm so sad, I feel so alone because of it. I'm helpless to it. I ache from it. It's like my heart is breaking and ì don't even know why. All I know is there's nothing in me, I move about with nothing real inside me, and I just want it all to be done."

I'm crying now. Weeping really (it's embarrassing, I can't stop). 

Siya holds me so gently, like I'm fragile and all of me is made of glass.

She rubs my back and she let's me break. She let's me let it out.

I just want it all to be done.