It’s hard to fathom that just nine months ago I started down this path. I made the decision, back in September, that I was done hiding my illness away and that I would do whatever I needed to do to help myself heal.

I had a very frank discussion with my primary physician — something I had not done before. We discussed therapy and possible medication. Unfortunately, that visit ended in a diagnosis of prostate cancer, which is another story in and of itself.

I started therapy sessions through my insurance (Kaiser) the week after meeting with my physician, but I was unhappy with my therapist after the first session. Not only did I think we were not a good fit, but I felt that the Kaiser coverage was never going to cut it. The Kaiser therapist told me that my coverage would only allow for approximately five individual sessions. After that, I would have to go into group therapy (which is cheaper.) Part of my struggle has always been feeling comfortable talking to people I don’t know. Group therapy was not going to work for me, at least not right now.

Someone I met, after making myself public, suggested the psychology clinic through Pacific University. They have two clinics that are run by their graduate students. They don’t take insurance, but I wasn’t concerned about that. I just wanted to get some help.

While a learning environment might seem like an unlikely place to get quality care, I found that it was far better than the professional program offered by Kaiser. I was impressed by the thoroughness of the intake sessions and felt quite comfortable with my student therapist almost immediately.

In the past, when I sought therapy, I always seemed to wind up with therapists who were fixed in their thinking, and, consequently, I always came away feeling that their care was more about their prescribed path than about trying to help me find a path that would work for me. Here, I at once felt comfortable and confident in my therapist.

Each therapist is under the direct mentorship of their graduate supervisor. The sessions are recorded, so they can discuss them and learn from them. The recordings are destroyed shortly afterward. I wasn’t thrilled with having a video camera on me, but I dealt with it, and after a month or so, I mostly forgot that I was being recorded.

There were weeks that were better than others. Some weeks were quite difficult, and save a few weeks where I felt like we were stalled, I always felt like we were making progress. When we began, I wasn’t sure when or how these sessions would end, but a few months ago, during one of the sessions, something happened. I still couldn’t tell you what, exactly, but I could suddenly see the horizon.

It was just a dark, featureless void before, but now there was a horizon and I was approaching it, like the way one can see the crest of a mountain range as they approach the summit, and you know that you will soon be standing at the top looking back down the steep path you just climbed up.

I stumbled, not long after, and thought that everything I had been building was all for naught. That setback proved to be another turning point, however, and rather rapidly I found myself cresting the summit.

I can’t say that I am cured. That will never be the case, but I am on solid footing and feel better than I have in a long, long time.

When I started therapy, I was skeptical that it would have much effect, but I was also determined to give it my full attention and effort. While I can’t say that my previous therapists were not good, I can say that they were not good for me, and whether it was this therapist, or my motivation, or a combination of factors, this has been a rewarding and enlightening process. I looked forward to my sessions each week.

A month or so ago, I began to see that the sessions would come to an end soon. I was both elated and terrified: elated to have traveled so far — much further than I thought possible, terrified because I would have to do this on my own from here on out. I would have to take all that I learned and trust that I could manage it without my weekly check-ins.

I worried that I would start backsliding, that I would lose the ground I had gained. I don’t want to go back to where I was, and maybe that’s not really possible. I have changed. My perspective has changed. Whatever may come, I am different now, and the way I look at my depression is different too. I know there will be lows and highs ahead, but I think I can manage.

This balance between excitement and fear is similar to how I felt when the training wheels came off my bicycle. I was riding around the block one sunny, summer day and I happened to look down at my back tire while I was cruising along the gravel street behind our house. To my astonishment, my training wheels were not touching the ground — at all. I completed my circuit around the block, rode right up to my dad, and asked him to take my training wheels off. He was quick to oblige. I climbed onto my bicycle, now untethered from those clunky, extraneous wheels, but also free to fall from side to side, I stepped on the pedals, and away I flew, filled with excitement, pride, fear, and joy.

So too, now I find myself free to fall, but confident in my ability to keep myself upright. That’s a feeling I have not had in a very long time.

The cancer is gone. My surgery was a success, and I am almost entirely recovered. I am playing soccer again — albeit on a limited basis — and I can do so without pissing myself. I call that a win.

So why don’t I feel happy?

Since finding a therapist that I liked, last fall, I have been going to sessions every week, save a couple of weeks right after my surgery, and it has been helping. There have been some weeks where I felt what I can only assume many people call normal, but save a few brief hours here or there, I can’t say that I’ve been truly happy. I’ve felt steady, and unaffected — confident even — but never happy.

Last week I was bragging to my therapist about how “even” I felt the week before, about how I seemed to be looking at the world with a different perspective that allowed difficulty to roll off of me. I wasn’t getting bogged down in things I couldn’t control, and I was far more assertive than I had been in a long time.

But then, suddenly, a day later, all that disappeared and I started sliding backwards. There was no cause, that I could discern, aside from being a bit overly tired, and the more I attempted to find something upon which I could at least blame for the set back, the less certain I became. I began to feel a great weight upon me, as if something was sitting on my lungs, and everything became heavy and labored. After a week of this, I began to doubt all the progress I had made in the preceding months. Deflated and discouraged, I was sinking back into a very familiar hole, and the thought crossed my mind that I would, in fact, never experience joy in my life.

That thought, alone, was crushing. What if I can never get out of this?

I lacked the strength or courage to tell anyone what was happening, and that certainly made it worse. It’s a hard place to be. I am not one to ask for help, especially when I don’t know what might help me, or even how to express what I’m experiencing. So, I remained silent until my next session.

Even then, it took most of the session before I admitted the idea that I might never feel joy. I acknowledged that I knew the thought wasn’t accurate, even while it felt as if it was. And then it occurred to me that I am unable to walk across that threshold to joy. I don’t know why. I don’t know what is holding me back. I just know that doorway is closed to me. I am a dweller on the threshold.

At the time I admitted this, it didn’t dawn on me how my semantics had changed. In the past, when talking about the barriers between me and happiness, I always spoke about it in terms of a wall, or of being in a pit, something far more permanent and foreboding to overcome. But a threshold? A threshold is meant to be crossed. It requires only a certain amount of energy, a certain resolve, and the other side can be achieved.

Here, in a moment where I could see nothing good, there is such promise.

A year ago, I wrote a short play called Into The Sun. A local company had put out a call for short plays on the theme of tolerance. I hadn’t intended to write anything, but a vision came to me a few days later, and I realized that it was a play. I thought I was writing one thing, but when I was done, it was something else. It seems I was already working on this, long before I knew it consciously. The central character is walking along the bank of a river, into the rising sun, and she is stumbling over the river rocks, but she is determined to keep going. She is blinded by the sun, and her feet are sliding out from under her, but she keeps stepping forward.

I may be a dweller here, but I think I might just step over that threshold sooner than I think.