The Confessions

"I told my girlfriend I had never been in love before I met her. The truth is I was completely broken by someone else two years before and I have never fully recovered. She thinks she is healing someone whole. She is healing someone in pieces."

"I once told someone I loved them for the first time purely because they said it first and the silence felt unbearable. I did love them eventually. But that first time was a lie born of panic."

"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."

"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 lied on my CV about a qualification I do not have. That was twelve years ago. I have since become genuinely excellent at the job. But the lie is still there at the foundation of my entire career and sometimes it feels like the whole thing could collapse."

"I quit a creative project I had worked on for three years because one person told me it was not good enough. I believed them and I should not have. I have wondered ever since what would have happened if I had kept going."

"I laughed at a joke made at someone else expense when I should have said something. The person being laughed at was in the room. They laughed too but their eyes did not. I laughed anyway because I wanted to belong to the group more than I wanted to be decent."

"I was given too much change in a shop once. A significant amount, nearly thirty pounds. I noticed immediately and walked out. I have never gone back to that shop since, partly from shame and partly because I do not want to return the money."

"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 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."