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 stayed with someone for eight months after I stopped loving them because I did not want to be alone over Christmas. I told myself I was being kind. I was being selfish. She planned a future with me during those eight months that I knew would never happen."

"I have never told my oldest friend that there was a period of about two years where I found our friendship difficult. She was going through something hard and I was not in a place to give what she needed. I showed up but not fully. I am not sure she ever noticed. I noticed."

"I never said I love you back to someone who said it to me because I panicked. They laughed it off. We never spoke of it again. We are friends still. But something shifted that day and I think we both know it."

"I interviewed someone for a position I knew had already been filled internally. HR required us to go through a process. I sat across from someone who had clearly prepared extensively and answered every question brilliantly. I shook their hand at the end and said we would be in touch."

"My mother asked me on her deathbed if I had forgiven her for leaving when I was seven. I said yes immediately. I had not forgiven her. I said it because she was dying and I could not bear to give her pain in that moment. Ten years on I think I have finally forgiven her for real."

"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 promised to keep quiet about something and kept quiet about it for years until it no longer mattered and then told someone casually as an anecdote. The person it involved heard about it secondhand. They did not react badly. But I had promised and I broke that promise and dressed it as harmless."

"I have never told my husband that the first year of our marriage I genuinely was not sure we had done the right thing. I kept waiting for the feeling to pass. It did pass. But those twelve months I carried alone were the loneliest of my life."

"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."