“They don’t know I am here… I don’t really know what to tell them.”
“Just say you went on vacation!”
Everyone at the table laughs; this is nobody’s idea of a vacation. This was our last resort.

There is a stigma attached to spending several hours per day, for weeks at a time, on a psychiatric floor. One of the more universal concerns expressed at the program is that inevitably, you will be asked to explain your disappearance to people in your life–family, friends, co-workers. I haven’t come up with a good answer yet.

I don’t really have anything to hide; I just want to make sure nobody thinks I am some loose cannon prone to snowballing out of control. It’s just that I’ve got some shit I’ve been worrying over, I am trying to deal with in the present and as well as the past. But you don’t have to worry about me. I’m going to be okay.