I found comfort in grisly true crime stories. Giving them up brought me peace | Mollie Goodfellow

It's hard to admit, but I was using others' tragedies as a way of protecting myself. Then a merchandising ad stopped me short

I vividly remember being a child, sitting on the edge of my parents' bed late in the evening, and watching Crimewatch. Reconstructions of violent crimes I didn't understand, usually against women, played out on screen. I remember sombre presenters such as Nick Ross and Kirsty Young pleading for information as grainy CCTV footage showed victims being followed through the streets at night, and dour police detectives talking through timelines of the hours before someone was killed.

This fascination with the morbid flowed easily into horror movies. After finishing school, I had my first major depressive episode, involving a hospital stay. It took a while for me to get back to myself; I didn't really leave the house apart from to go to therapy, and I soon became a strange nocturnal hermit. During the day I would sleep, and at night I would lie in bed and watch scary movies where horrible things happened to female actors, fake-slaughtered in buckets of corn syrup.

Mollie Goodfellow is a freelance journalist and comedy writer

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