Dear Thirteen: Me In A Year

A little over a year ago I crashed out at a party and one of my close friends, Chelsea, demanded that I start going to therapy.

In a lot of ways it was like an intervention. Chelsea and other people that love me recognized what I had been pushing down. They saw that something was wrong and they all but demanded that I get help. 

I agreed to go to get them off my back. I didn't want the people I love to think that I didn’t value them or their concerns, so I signed up for a consultation. I promised that I would be totally honest and see what the people had to say. 

At that first session, after doing my intake report and chatting a little about my history and current headspace; the therapist said that my mind was like a prison and asked why I was okay with that. It was like cold water being dumped down my back. Hearing a perfect stranger describe me like that was the wake up call I needed. So I made a follow up. I was going to get help. 

In the last 52 weeks I’ve only missed 6 sessions give or take. I show up, I’m honest, I cry. Simple to say I’m putting in the work. 

And it hasn’t been easy either. In so many ways this has been the hardest year of my life. My great-grandma died. I almost got evicted. My dad is getting married again. I received a new diagnosis (OCD girlies make some noise!). I quit my job and committed myself to a new career. Had the police called on me. I got ghosted in a crazy way (more on this in a later post). And just in general had a bitch of a year. 

While so many things happened this year there's one thing I want to look at in particular: the OCD diagnosis.

Hearing the letters OCD rocked my world in a way the anxiety diagnosis hadn’t. Anxiety felt true. It felt like something I had lived with for a while. It wasn’t a new fact, it was simply giving the boogie man a name. 

OCD…that felt different. It feels big. I sat in that session and cried for what felt like hours. Anxiety was something I could overcome. A few chapters of my life's memoir. I was horrified by the idea that the way I feel now, the way that I’ve felt for so long, would be something I lived with forever. 

I sat alone with the diagnosis for a while. Stopped writing, stopped talking, I wasn’t going out. It felt so…heavy. Like this massive thing sitting on my chest. I couldn’t figure out how to get it off.  

Then a few weeks ago Big Nat (my therapist) asked me to reflect on our first session together. At our first meeting she asked me what I wanted to get out of therapy. I told her that I wanted to be different. That I wanted to not feel this way forever. Big Nat asked me what I thought about my words from a year ago. I told her that I didn’t feel different. That in some ways, I actually felt worse. Last year I was just a nervous wreck and now I was someone with OCD. I had not only a therapist but a psychiatrist too. That was objectively not better. 

She then flipped through her notes and started talking to me about all the ways I had changed. The risks I had taken over the last year. The confidence I gained. That there are a million and one ways that getting help has made me better. That even in the hard times I had control. I had strategies I didn’t have before. Just a few years ago I couldn’t even imagine myself turning 25. My livelihood was a matter of circumstance. I was alive in spite of my best efforts. Now that’s different. Now I picture a future for myself. I make plans and stick to them.

I don’t I wish for nighttime so that I can wallow in my emptiness like I use to. No, I wish for night to come because that means dinner and drinks with an old friend. Bridges don’t call to me for nefarious reasons. Now the drawbridges siren song means I’m closer to my favorite bookstore.

Even in the worst year of my life I didn’t fear myself like I have in the past. I live because of myself, not in spite of. Things may be hard. But the hard meant I was alive. I am constantly reminded of a quote from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, “life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.”

So rather than focusing on the scary, I’m trying to focus on getting better. That this thing won’t change me. I’m still Jailyn. Now I’m just Jailyn with a little extra information about myself. And while I don’t dream about being in therapy for the rest of life, I want to see the rest of my life. So I’ll keep going. 

Next year when Big Nat asks me to reflect, I hope to have changed even more. Maybe it’ll be a career change again, or I’ll have fallen in love, maybe I adopted a dog. Me in a year might be so different from the me that exists now. Maybe her eyes still look like mine, and she smiles like me. But prayerfully the Jailyn of next year feels so much more love and so little fear. 

I’m proud of the me that got through this year. I’m even prouder of the me that is committed to seeing the rest of my life.