I wish my personal posts could reach out to people. To make them feel even just one tiniest bit of what I feel. Just one. Or am I forever blocked away from everyone else by a great glass womb of ice, as I often wondered as teenager, in my anger and frustration at being unable to make sense and communicate with the world around me.

We had nothing in common, the world and I. Cats were the closest I felt to anything. And eleven they seemed frustrated by a world that took no notice of their signals when they wanted to be left alone.

Eventually, I tried to exit on my own terms. A failure. I didn’t know what I was doing: all I know was paracetamol killed people if you overdosed, so that’s what I did. I didn’t know the utter agony it caused as your organs shut down one by one.

What I did learn that day, as I got sicker and decided to confess, was what how little my life meant to so many people. My friends were lovely. My head of year sneeringly asked how bad a headache I must have had to take so much. The man I did all this over vanished. My parents yelled a lot. The bullies carried on. I gave up my fight against them. Reporting them made no dent. Neither did unaliving myself.

I had nowhere to go but down. Retreat into a world within me.