At some point during our undefined courtship, my friend’s attentions went from playful to predatory. I was touched in places I didn’t want to be touched. All the behaviour that would earn a male friend several swift kicks in the nads, possibly even a police complaint. But in the absence of a penis poking my anatomy, I didn’t know how to qualify my experiences as violations.

I’m someone who wants her escape erotica to look like the Mills & Boons version from her teenage years. Gentle, loving, slow and sensuous. My partner, unfortunately, belongs to the other end of the porno spectrum. He likes his porn to be brutal; the more depraved it is, the better he enjoys it.

My mother and father have no idea about my out-of-wedlock pregnancy and abortion. My baby was the final price I have paid in the lifelong war between living life on my terms and allowing my parents’ need to maintain a facade of being the “adarsh” family.

In progressive industries like mine, few women want to complain against another woman. How was I going to admit, even to myself, that my powerful female boss was a monster, while simultaneously complaining about the lack of women in leadership positions?

Growing up, my highly educated, intelligent parents, who ran a double-income household even before Cosmopolitan said it was in, were an inspiration. They taught me to question everything, which worked out great... until I started questioning them.

They say cocaine is the rich person’s drug. Every decision, every thought, can be justified after a couple of lines. Even though it’s no hallucinogen, it allows you to live in a mirage for a few hours. There’s us, the coke users, happy, rich, successful – and then there’s them, the regulars, poor, lazy, and unworthy.