Sometimes, You Can Just Be Done

Today’s Reverb prompt:

What was the greatest risk you took in 2013? What was the outcome?

I read this prompt early this morning and have been pondering on it all day long.  As long as I am medicated and fairly stable, I don’t really take risks.  I don’t even generally take calculated risks.  I was always that kid at the playground who said, “Hey guys, this is a bad idea!”  I was the college-aged kid who said, “We really shouldn’t be doing this!”  And I’m the person now who says, “We can’t do that…it’s too dangerous!”

So, a risk-taker I am not.  As I pondered over the prompt some more, it hit me.  I have done something risky this year.  While it is probably not considered “risky” for other people, it was for me.

I have been in therapy for the past eight years, solid.  Most of it was weekly, some of it twice a week, thrice a week, a few months of every few weeks.  And now down to once a month.  I feel like I’ve made progress and that I am at a point in my life where I don’t need it the way I used to.

I hadn’t seen my therapist in just under a month, the last time I saw her.  We reveled at how well I am doing and at how many of the symptoms of PTSD I had been experiencing have gone by the wayside (through difficult and careful work, I might add).  We talked about how the Intermediate Treatment Group I was in for almost a month had helped that along, and we talked about plans for the future.

I told her I wasn’t sure I needed much more therapy.  She doesn’t know me very well, but she seemed to agree.  I am going to come in a couple more times on a monthly basis, and then, maybe be done with regular therapy.  Of course, the door is always open if I want to go back, and I can see that at some point in my life I might want to.  But for now, I’m going to attend these little monthly sessions, make sure life keeps on going steady and well, and just see what happens.

I never thought I would see a day where I wouldn’t be in therapy.  It wasn’t presented as an option and that makes me sad, although I don’t think I could have really done it until now.  I just have much better coping skills than I ever had, and, thanks to the group I just went through, have much better planning and scheduling and structuring abilities.  Which makes life better because, well, it just does.  It makes ME better, anyway, and that’s what really matters.