‘To be a judge is easy,’ Judge Collins would say to students, when invited to speak at university conferences. ‘The golden rule is: you must be impassive. You must keep all emotions out of your job.’ He firmly believed this. Heck, it had been his modus operandi throughout his career.

How could he know that his beliefs would change radically, that he would be so rocked to his core by death that his golden rule would feel impossible to follow?

Therapy was never an option for me. Therapy was a thing only meant for insane people, I always thought.

‘I’m completely fine,’ I would often say to myself about my mental stability, when contemplating about a thing I may have done which could be deemed a bit crazy.

But I stopped saying this the day I grabbed the knife, looking to defend myself with it, only to find air waiting for me.