The Confessions

"When my colleague got the promotion I had been working towards I felt genuinely pleased when their first major project struggled. I did not want them to fail. But some part of me was relieved that it was hard for them. I am not proud of that part."

"I did not say goodbye to my best friend before he died. We had argued about something trivial and I was waiting for him to apologise first. He was gone before either of us backed down. That argument was about nothing. The silence it created was about everything."

"I read my teenage daughters diary. I found nothing alarming but I violated her trust completely. She is twenty six now and we are close. I have never told her. I think about it whenever she tells me something in confidence."

"I never told my father I was proud of him. He worked himself to exhaustion for our family and I took it completely for granted. He passed away three years ago. I have said the words out loud to an empty room since then. It is not the same."

"I told my children their grandfather was a good man when he was not. I wanted to protect them from a complicated truth. Now they are adults and I wonder if I should have let them form their own view. I took that from them."

"I told my last partner that I needed space to work on myself. The truth is I had already emotionally checked out six months before and just did not have the courage to say so. Space was a kindly worded exit."

"I wrote a negative anonymous review of my former employer that was not entirely fair. I was angry when I wrote it. That review is still up there and still affecting their recruitment. I have considered removing it and have not."

"I once had the chance to reconcile with someone I had hurt badly. They reached out and I did not respond. I told myself I was not ready. I was not ready for years. By the time I was ready I could not find them. That silence is something I will always regret."

"I have always been my parents favourite and my brother knows it. I never did anything to change that dynamic. I just quietly accepted the better treatment and told myself it was not my fault. He grew up feeling second. That was partly my fault."

"I made a comment about a colleagues appearance once, very quietly, to a mutual friend. I thought it was funny. It was repeated. It got back to them. They never confronted me. They just became quieter around me and eventually requested a transfer. I never apologised."