I graduated! (from therapy)

Lilly Scheibelhut
Jun 15, 2025
2 min read

I had my very first therapy appointment August 29, 2018 and (of course) it was because of a boy.

I lived in New York at the time, and my long distance boyfriend had just broken up with me. I immediately turned into a walking zombie sucked of all happiness. But what got me into therapy, what scared me the most, was my apathy to dying. I didn't want to actively kill myself, but like if I got him by a truck and died, it wouldn't have been that bad.

I remember that first day I went and couldn't stop crying. I was so embarrassed. And it wasn't even over my ex.

"Those are some pretty mean thoughts you have to yourself."

I shrug as I blow my nose, tears in my eyes. "I'm just hard on myself."

"Right ..." She says scribbling in her notebook. "But would you talk like that to your friend?"

"What?" My eyebrows shoot together confused. "Of course not."

"Okay, so why do you talk to yourself like that?"

"Because I'm not my friend ..." What a stupid question.

While nothing changed immediately after that conversation, it will probably stick with me for the rest of my life. The lightbulb moment that 1) maybe I'm more f*cked up than I think and 2) maybe I don't have to be this way.

Over the next years, I did therapy maybe 10 times total with a few different people till 2022. That's the year depression hit full force. That August, I started seeing Kate just about every week or every other week. I didn't know what was wrong with me. And it was when I was making a lot of progress in therapy, overcoming my depression, that the memories returned.

I think my body was like "Okay ... she's strong enough to remember this now. She can handle it."

And I was. I finally was.

***

I recently had my last scheduled therapy visit with Kate. Yep, that's right. No more therapy on the books for me. (Of course, she's always there when I need her.) *Throws graduation hat in the air *

What a crazy, beautiful ride this life. I wouldn't trade it for any other.

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