Unwritten

Today, I graduated from therapy. I began there on March 11th, and I ended on April 11th. The counselors were proud of me, amazed that I was ready to leave so quickly. But I wasn't. I wanted it. I wanted to get better. I was eager to learn, eager to work, eager to listen. I fought hard every single day to get better.  The graduation ceremonies are always bitter sweet. Everyone sits around in the small group circle, and they pass around a pin that looks like a dove, and the members of the group and counselors talk about you and give you words of encouragement. The counselors were the only ones there today who had seen me when I first came into the program, everyone else had started after me. One after another, though, everyone spoke about how positive I was. One of the group members even went so far as to say I had a beautiful, colorful aura around me. The counselor told me I gave thoughtful, holistic feedback that would be missed when I was gone. Most people cry, but I didn't. I...

When you suffer from depression, you become extremely apathetic about almost everything. I wasn't pulling my weight around the apartment, my room was a disaster, I wasn't taking care of my dog like I should have. All I wanted to do was sleep, even when I started therapy and was beginning to see some hope, I just wanted to come home and curl up in my bed and not face the world. I identified this as an area that I needed to improve if I wanted to have a happier life. It started with my dog. Until this point, I was lucky if I managed to take him on a walk a few times a week, but now my goal had become to take him on a walk at least once day. It was surprising to me that this was also something that would make me happy. My dog is crazy and goofy, and watching him just be so excited to see and smell everything he possibly could in that short walk made me smile, so I kept making time to do this day after day. I quickly realized that taking Gus for a walk also gave me more energy....

My first day in the Stress Center is a blur. I don't remember a single thing talked about in our lessons that day. All I can remember is sitting in my small group, leg bouncing wildly, listening to someone talk, and realizing that I might actually have some people here to whom I didn't have to explain in exact detail how I felt. They already knew because they were living through it themselves. This was kind of a novel concept for me because for YEARS I had felt that the only place I could go where people understood me was the theatre. Most people in that world shared a passion, a common goal, and many emotional experiences with me. There are some things that happen in rehearsals, you see, that simply cannot be explained to anyone outside. But here I was, sitting in a room of people who were decidedly non-thespians, and yet they understood. That day, I basically sat alone at lunch. Someone sat down with me for a couple of minutes, but they left after eating just a few bites, and...