This is a long one, sorry! I didn’t think it would end up so long but I hope you like reading it!
I grew up very sheltered. My parents were not risk-takers by nature and they did everything they could to keep my world as beige as possible. I had an 8pm curfew even when I was 18 and boyfriends were an absolute no-go. I had no idea how boys worked and instead of teaching me how to look after myself in the social world, my parents thought it best to simply remove me from it.
When I was 19 I had had enough. I had left education at 18 and taken a nice, stable office job but left that – and home – to be a live-in barmaid nearly 200 miles away. My parents spent days trying to talk me out of it but my mind was made up and I boarded the coach for the trip into the unknown.