My life had fallen apart and so I fell with it. I started to write. The book that was to be my first novel, Only Ever Yours, came to me as if in a fever dream, spilling onto the page with such speed that upon rereading it, there were entire passages that I had no recollection of writing. Only Ever Yours was published in 2014, winning multiple awards, the film rights snapped up. I was flown first-class to New York where a party was thrown in my honour, Eva Longoria and Laverne Cox attending and telling me how much the book had meant to them. My second novel, Asking For It, was released in 2015, hitting #1 and staying in the top 10 charts in Ireland for 52 weeks. People began to recognise me, approaching me on the street to talk about my work, and while they were invariably kind, it made me self-conscious in a way I couldn’t properly articulate. To make it worse, that visibility was accompanied by vicious online abuse. I would wince every time I looked at social media, confronted by people who seemed to hate me for no apparent reason other than that I was a woman with an opinion. I told myself that I didn’t care, but I was lying. It was impossible to understand – all of my dreams had come true and yet I still wasn’t happy. I felt empty, a cipher that wore the mask of “Louise O’Neill” and smiled blankly for the duration. When I found myself idly wondering if I was heading for a breakdown, I knew something had to change.