The first one

The leaflet is nine pages and about seven of them are worst cases. I have read it three times, which was three times too many, and I am now going to stop reading it.

A long, careful, uncertain first entry.

Nothing has happened yet, which nobody had warned me about. I think I expected to feel something immediately, and instead I made a cup of tea and put a wash on.

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.

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.

More thinking required.