Your first day at a PHP program is one of the most emotionally exhausting days you'll experience. Your first hour (or was it two, or three?) is spent baring your heart and soul to a complete stranger with a clipboard. Your life story becomes a checklist to them. Abuse? Check. Sexual assault? Check. Irrational anger? Double check. It all gets broken down into such finite particles of existence that you begin to question the real reason you're there. Was it really the mental breakdown that led you to run out of work and chase non existent babies around a parking lot? Or was it that one time in elementary school somebody called you fat?
And then you finish up and go to meet a group. That group looks nothing like you were expecting. But then again, you aren't quite sure what you were expecting. Whatever it was, all this group is, is a gathering of adults sitting around a table, not truly prepared to share the damage that brought them there.
Then it's over, and you're not sure why, but things are looking up despite the fact you're exhausted and the program used up all of your spoons for the day.
Your day one went by in a flash, and you can only hope that despite the difficulties you faced, the rest go the exact same way.
