Today, I had a therapy session. It was my 13th one since I started in June after weeks of mood swings that threatened to alter my personality permanently (dramatic!). At the end, my therapist asked if there was anything else I wanted to talk about. I sighed, because I was tired of complaining, of living with this version of myself. I just wanted this period of time to be over and done with, I thought.
Instead, I told her I’ve been feeling exhausted, even after waking up for the day. It’d be 1pm and I would feel my eyelids thud down during menial tasks. I told her I sometimes I take naps in the middle of the day. In fact, I think I started doing this more regularly in August, when I was home in Pennsylvania.
I glanced up at her face, still set in the inscrutable, mellow expression I sometimes feel frustrated with. She paused, and then pressed for a few more details: How long are these naps? I’d take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour for a daytime nap. When did you notice this pattern of taking them? I’m not sure, but it’s been sporadic for a while, at least a month and a half.
These might be symptoms of depression, she said, and pointed out my listlessness, my indifference, my inability to stick to a routine I so desperately wanted. Maybe you should see your primary care physician or psychiatrist, she offered. I said, I will call them, not this week, but maybe next. I don’t think I lied, but there wasn’t too much truth in my promise either.
After I logged off the session, I felt so stupid. I thought about everything I’ve said to her in those 13 sessions (how inauspicious, I wryly noted to myself) and my instant conclusion was, God, you are such a fucking drama queen. Then I flipped through my old journal entries and watched myself be convinced by Anying from two weeks, three months, one year ago, that perhaps I wasn’t exaggerating.
Therapy has felt like a precarious game of dominoes. I’ve configured this tapestry of feelings that all connect together for my therapist, only to be the person to knock them all down. I make myself restart, because I don’t have legitimate pillars of feeling.
My friend Maggie wrote about her struggle with loneliness, with feeling not quite herself right now. How she feels lost with herself and the world. I read her piece and I cried and then I read again and thought, I want nothing more than her to feel happy.
There’s a desperate ache that exists in the center of my body. I weighed every possibility for a “why” and the only thing I could say to my therapist for a solid few weeks was that my IUD must be worsening my sadness. I’m not a liar by nature, I think it’s sometimes an unconscious choice and I’m starting to unlearn it.
