The Confessions

"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 was jealous of my sister her whole life. Better grades, more friends, prettier, funnier. I never told her I was proud of her even when I was. She moved abroad five years ago and we barely speak. I think my jealousy drove that distance and I have only recently been able to admit it."

"I found a wallet in a supermarket car park with three hundred and forty pounds in it. I kept the money and handed in the empty wallet. I told myself the person was probably insured. I have thought about that justification almost every day since and I know it was nonsense."

"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 have never told my mother that the year she remarried was the hardest year of my childhood. She was so happy and I did not want to take that from her. I am forty three now. That year still lives in me and she has no idea."

"I have been at my company for nine years and genuinely do not know what I contribute. I turn up, I participate, I produce work. But I could not honestly tell you what the organisation would lose if I left tomorrow. That thought keeps me awake."

"I ended a three year relationship by text because I was too cowardly to do it in person. She had done nothing wrong. I was just bored and too afraid of her tears to face her. I have never forgiven myself for that."

"I have never told my children I struggled with their early years. That the relentlessness of it nearly broke me. They are teenagers and I present as a parent who found it natural and joyful. I did find joy. I also found despair. They should probably know both are possible."

"I told someone a secret about a third party that changed how they saw that person permanently and irreparably. The secret was true. But it was not mine to tell and the telling of it served no purpose except to make me feel like the person with interesting information."

"I have judged people silently and harshly for things I have since done myself. The hypocrisy is not lost on me. I am trying to be slower to judge now. But the memory of my earlier certainty about other people is its own source of shame."