But God, it was hard. When my second act hit it wouldn’t stop hitting; a collapse into ME/Chronic Fatigue, a free-fall into social isolation, and the loss of identity, love, friends, home, meaning and, frankly, my mind.

(I can still remember lying on my sofa one November afternoon, watching the sky slowly turn to dusk hour by hour. There, amidst the wreckage of my previous life, adrift with neither map nor compass, I knew that if my next breath were my last, no-one would find me. Fun times.)