The Confessions

"I broke up with someone who was genuinely good to me because my friends did not like them. I let other peoples opinions override my own heart. They married someone else last year. They look happy. I still wonder."

"I have a savings account my husband does not know about. Not for anything sinister. Just because having money that is purely mine makes me feel safe in a way I cannot fully explain. But the secrecy feels wrong and I do not know how to introduce it after six years."

"I split a bill unevenly at a dinner once, in my own favour, knowing my friend had not been paying attention. It was only twelve pounds. I do not know why I did it. We have had hundreds of dinners since and I have always been scrupulously fair. That one time still bothers me."

"I confessed here about the argument that kept me from saying goodbye to my best friend. I cannot change that. But I wrote to his wife last month. Just to say I thought about him often and that I was sorry for the argument and the silence. She called me. We talked for an hour. Something healed."

"I spent most of my children early years focused on my career. I told myself I was doing it for them. I was doing it for me. They are teenagers now and we are close but I am aware of a distance I created in those years that I am still trying to close."

"There have been times in my life when I have not wanted to be here anymore. I have never acted on it and I am glad. I have never told anyone. I wonder sometimes if telling someone would make it lighter or heavier. Writing this is the closest I have come."

"I have a colleague whose laugh I have always found irritating. Over several years I have made small comments that I knew would make others find it irritating too. I successfully made someone self conscious about their own laugh. I realised what I had done when I noticed they had stopped laughing freely."

"I have caught myself hoping, briefly, that something would go wrong for people who seem to have everything. Not seriously. Not with any real wish for harm. But the flicker of it is there sometimes and I do not like what it says about me."

"I have fantasised about walking away from my entire life. Not from the people in it. Just from the version of myself I have built and the obligations I have accumulated. Starting somewhere new as someone slightly different. I would never do it. But the thought visits regularly."

"I told a mutual friend something that had been told to me in strict confidence. I told myself I was worried about the person and needed advice. The truth is it was interesting and I wanted to share it. The friendship never recovered. It should not have recovered."