Personal Narrative-Therapist's Waiting Room

“This is pointless.”
I muttered those words at a volume that could only be heard by my own ears. The waiting room was torture, and the waiting was even more torturous. Two fake, and very plastic looking plants sat in the corner, shining abnormally in the harsh lighting. My palms were sweaty from anxiety and the unbearable heat that seemed to encase the room. My mom sat at the couch opposite of me, her reading glasses illuminated from the glow of her cell phone. Music played softly from the empty front desk that sat behind a wooden baby gate. It wasn’t that I expected a therapist’s waiting room to look like. I expected obnoxiously cheerful posters telling me to keep on living and to be healthy. I arrived in that room with an attitude that could put what I felt boiling over inside me to shame.
“I don’t want to be here,” I mumbled, a bit more audibly than I intended. I wondered absently what would happen if I just strolled out the door and never came back to

this waiting room that could make Death Valley’s summer temperatures feel insignificant.
“How would you know if therapy works, you’ve never even tried it before,” my mom replied, looking over her glasses.
“What if I don’t like him?”
“Then I’ll take you to a new one.”
The music played quietly still, rattling off hits from that time. Waiting is what made everything slow to a crawl. Waiting for people to evaluate me, waiting to get medications, waiting for them to work, waiting to live. My life was crawling, trying to get back on it’s feet, but waiting stopped it. I’ve realized now that life is full of waiting, one just has to satiate that waiting. Depression is like that. You have to wait to live, or you wait for yourself to die. I waited to die, but I ended up living.
Just when I thought I would sit in that godforsaken oven of a room, a door opened with a small creak and a click. In an instant, a small, furry mass of wiggling ears and tail bolted from under the baby gate. It was a very dark chocolate color with a splash of pink and a flash of white. I was suddenly greeted by the unconditional love of a miniscule dog. He had the long, body of a dachshund and the face of a chihuahua. He whimpered as if I was his long lost master and I had been absent due to a war on a distant alien planet. And of course, I petted him, as did my mom.
“You’ve already made an appointment for our next session, correct?”
A man appeared from the doorway of a room behind the baby gate.

His silver colored head seemed to brush the top of the doorway as he appeared. Glasses sat on the bridge of his nose. He vaguely resembled grandpa who appeared at a family gathering that one has heard of on occasions, but his persona was never elaborated on. That one grampa that went to college and was successful and envied.
A petite woman emerged from the doorway as well, which only emphasised his immense height. She nodded in response, and ushered herself out the door into the relief of cold air. Even the January weather seemed like a better option than the microwave we were nestled in.
“Lauren?” he asked, trekking across the baby gate. I nodded in response, and continued to pet the adorable, eternally moving dog at my feet. He decided that it was a bright idea to show me a toy rope that sat in the corner of the room, and set it at my feet expectantly.
“That’s Poco,” he

said.
I smiled, and attempted to grab the rope, but it was tugged out of my hand before I could react. He was filled with the
Soon, we were in an equally warm room with two black and saggy couches pushed against two walls opposite a desk. My therapist, known as Dr. Dudick, sat in a spinning office chair in front of the desk, so he could face the couches and his laptop. Poco followed us in and curled up on a couch next to me. I couldn’t help but smile.
And again, I had to spill my life story. Basically, how I messed up and how messed up I was. I’d given this speech before, to psychiatrists in cold rooms, nurses in crowded emergency rooms, professionals in the halls of a mental hospital. I had to show them my battle scars on my body and in my mind. I was well rehearsed by then. I knew what to include when my mom was in the room and what to not include so she wouldn’t treat me like an even more unstable bomb.
I went to therapy frequently at first, about every week and twice a week. I cried many times, the bottled up emotions inside me spilling over like a tipped over mug of coffee. The things I said or did would wipe off or permanently stain, depending on the circumstance.
Through all the tears, anger and sadness, I went to therapy less and less. Soon I went every other week, then two weeks, then a month. I learned about better ways to deal with my problems. It wasn’t therapy alone that helped me, it just helped me realize that I was able to feel proper emotions again. That I didn’t have to be scared. There were people out there that could help me help myself. There is no one out there that could’ve fixed me. I had to learn how to fix myself.
The one thing that I have received from my experience with depression is that nothing is exactly the same once you stop living in the past. It’s hard not to focus on the fact that things have changed so drastically for a long time. You have to create a new person from the pieces that were left behind, a different you out of absent emotions and hyper-aware ones. I still learn from my depression each day. Each time the medication decreases, I have to figure out how to adjust. I have to figure out how to live again.
My past mental state has lead to important discoveries about myself. I am stronger than I was before depression took over. I know now that there are better, healthier ways to help myself. There are still the days where I only wish to disappear into the covers on my bed than to drag myself out of them, but part of recovery is learning to accept that. I have learned to accept the fact that I won’t be happy all the time and allow myself to feel emotions again. I have to accept me.
The road to recovery isn’t a giant loop of ‘two steps forwardd, one step back”, it’s more of a trek undetaken my a novice adventurer. She isn’t exactly sure where the desitnation is or what the journey has in store, but she goes through with it. She will encounter dragons and seemingly undominable foes, but will encounter sweet families who will provide her witht he things she needs on her journey. As the trek wears on, she knows the trail well, but will be forced to back track and start on a new direction. The journey will wear her out, but once she reaches her destination, she will look back at the seemingly hopeless undertaking and be so proud of herself.
If I ever fall down again into the hopeless pit I’ve conquered, I can remind myself that I’ve beat it. I’m that adventurer. I’ve rock climbed the depths of my psyche and made it out alive. And that alone will keep me going, knowing that I am capable of healing. Just the ability to say “I made it” completely truthfully is so satisfying. Mental strength is so important, more important that physical strength, and it is something everyone should be capable of.
If I my family had never sensed a change in me, and I hadn’t become so sloppy with concealing the marks on my skin, I might not exist today. I might have died two years ago, and never known the amazing people I have encountered in that time. I might not have discovered all the reasons there are to live. I might not have realized all the people that truly care about my well being. There would’ve been art I’d never seen, art I’d never made, stories I’d never written, music I’d never heard, sunrises I’d never seen. And I’m so glad I’ve done all of those things and enjoyed them. After all, I had to do this all myself. There is no one that could’ve done it for me. I had to want to get better, and not running out the door I walked into when introduced to therapy was one of the best desicions of my life.