I can’t change the past. It’s always quite surprising to me how things feel terrible in retrospect, but at the time they really don’t. A nice guy, fun, non-violent, a weird sex thing, money was exchanged that paid for my family’s Christmas presents. It didn’t feel wrong. But often, when you are living an experience, and things seem OK, you really don’t worry about what is wrong with it. Especially at that age. I didn’t think about my future when I was twenty-one. I didn’t think, ‘If I take that twenty pounds from the side of the bed, it will haunt me for years.’ It didn’t haunt me at the time, surely that is all that matters? So, I always try to put myself back there, when that dark and heavy thump of anxiety and regret tries to keep me awake at night, I tell myself it is OK to have been questionable. I also remind myself that people are out there doing actually terrible things. Rape, murder, fraud, betrayal. My experience was nothing like that, but still, it challenges my self-respect. And that is very annoying.

I’ve always thought my marriage was quite normal, until recently. Maybe I’ll look back on it one day, and not believe I was in it. It’s feeling less and less like where I should be every single day.

I realise I have finished my drink. Whoops. I order another one.

When I met Michael, a safe, sexually unambitious man who didn’t demand anything weird in the bedroom, I felt like maybe he redeemed me. He was vanilla, I was absolved. Most women have had some kind of relationship they are not proud of. A one-night stand, a guy who you stayed with who got you to do kinky stuff you weren’t even into. An affair. The list goes on. Well mine was inoffensive really. No one got hurt. But it left me with shame. Michael took it away. I had my own business, I didn’t rely on him for anything. And he was gentle and I felt relieved that my deviant days were over. The past is the past. Everyone is allowed to have dubious stories that make no sense to anyone like they made sense to you at the time. That’s called living. I was adventurous at that age, I was wild. I have spent most of my adult life trying to justify my actions.