The first one

Sitting down to this properly tonight.

Day one. I am writing this partly because somebody else's day-one entry is the reason I felt able to do it at all, and it seems only fair to leave one behind.

A first entry about self-kindness.

I told one person. Not my mother, not work. One person, and only because she asked me a direct question at the right moment.

I want to write this down before I forget how frightened I was, because I suspect in three months I will not believe it. Twenty minutes of standing there. Then eight seconds. Then it was over and I felt faintly ridiculous.

What I keep coming back to is how long it took me to get here. Not the medication — the asking. Years of that.

Gently.