The Confessions

"I told a job candidate that the company culture was excellent and the team was supportive. Neither was true. I needed to fill the role urgently. They lasted four months. I knew within weeks they were miserable. I said nothing and let them work it out themselves."

"I was offered a role in another country that would have changed my life. I turned it down because my mother was unwell. She recovered fully and lived another twelve years. She never knew I had turned it down for her. I never told her because I did not want her to feel guilty."

"I was a terrible older brother. Dismissive, unkind, always too busy. My brother idolised me and I treated his admiration like an inconvenience. He is one of the finest people I know and I spent his childhood making him feel small. I am trying to make up for it now but some things cannot be undone."

"I told my husband the reason I did not want children was medical. It is not medical. I simply do not want them and was afraid he would leave if I said so plainly. He deserved honesty and I gave him a story."

"I told my family I could not make it home for Christmas one year because of work. I stayed home alone by choice. I just needed to not perform happiness for one year. Nobody knows that. They think I was miserable being away. I was the most peaceful I had been in years."

"I never told my best friend from school how much she meant to me. We drifted after university as people do. I heard last year she had been seriously ill. I wanted to reach out and could not find the right words. I still have not found them."

"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 confessed about my secret savings account. I told my husband last Tuesday. I showed him the balance and explained why I had started it. He was quiet for a long time and then he said he was glad I had it. The relief of being fully known is extraordinary."

"My teenage son thinks I never struggled in school. I struggled enormously. I was too proud to tell him when he was finding it hard and instead I pushed him harder. I watched him cry over his results one night and said nothing useful. I wish I had just told him the truth about my own failures."

"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."