A Full Journal

Nearly four years ago, I bought a journal.

I was nearing the end of my first therapy journey, the first leg of what I would learn is a life long journey of understanding my mental health and its effect on me. My therapist was going on maternity leave in less than a month, and when she returned she would be taking on a different position in the practice—she would no longer be seeing patients. I was heartbroken, how could I not be? I had shared so many things with her, things that no one else in my life knew—things that I barely knew—about myself. She had taught me so much about how my brain worked, and helped me work with the things that didn’t work exactly the way they are supposed to inside it.

The idea of being on my own with my mental health journey was scary. My therapist suggested matching me with another doctor within the practice, someone she thought I would click with. I turned that down, and when she asked me how much of that impulse was just me not wanting to rehash my life story with a new person. I don’t remember the percentage I gave her exactly, but I think it was a little more than 50%. The other half was me believing that I could do it, I could use what she had taught me and do well on my own. She supported my decision, and reminded me that I could always go back to therapy (which, spoiler alert, I eventually did), and even said that I should consider medication (spoiler: I did that, too).

There is no shame in asking for help, or seeking out that help. You’ve read those words on this blog countless times, because it’s true. There is no shame in taking a break from therapy and then going back, or continuing to go to therapy for years and years at a time.

In one of our last sessions together, I told my therapist that I had bought a journal for myself. As any true aspiring writer, I had accumulated several journals and notebooks throughout my childhood, and I hardly wrote in any of them. I eventually gave them all to my mom, since she needs a lot of paper for all of her notes and grocery lists. However, this time, I promised myself that I was going to write in this journal. At first I tried to write in it every day, focusing specifically on the anxious thought patterns I was noticing in myself that I had learned about through therapy. I stuck with this for a while, and eventually switched to writing in it when I was really struggling and needed a way to organize my thoughts.

That journal is almost full. There are only about five or six pages left, and when I noticed that earlier this week, it made me a bit emotional. Four years of my life is documented in this journal—everything from my last appointment with that therapist to the latest appointment I had with the doctor who prescribes my anxiety medication. I wish the scared, anxious seventeen-year-old could have read a few pages ahead.

Maybe I would have gotten to this point anyway.

Thanks for reading, and I hope all of my American friends who celebrate Thanksgiving had a blessed and safe holiday.

—Abbie