Standing in the kitchen

So. First one done. I had been carrying the box around the house for four days like it was something I had borrowed and needed to give back, and in the end I did it standing up in the kitchen with the radio on.

Wrote 1,400 words before the first injection.

The pharmacist talked me through it very fast and I nodded at all of it and retained about a third. I have written down the bits I remember and I will ask again at the review.

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

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.

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

To be revisited.