I could easily have been a completely ruined person. I could easily have committed suicide when I was in my 20s. I could easily have been someone who could not do anything, just living in a hovel in poverty somewhere. That may sound crazy, but I’m basing it on my family. Both my sisters are living that way. When I was younger it was really difficult for me to exist normally.

I didn’t know how to behave socially. I don’t mean that my behaviour was wild or insane, I just often felt like I did not know what other people were talking about. The things I said were very startling to people and I didn’t know why.

With a great deal of effort I got myself into a different place where I could not only negotiate society, but I could actually work for myself, write books and have some degree of success in a world that’s pretty hard to get any success in. I find that quite miraculous.

My 40s were a great decade. I remember being surprised by that because, like a lot of people in my generation, I was brought up to believe that when you’re a 42-year-old then everything’s terrible. But I began to feel confidence in my writing that I had not felt entirely before, and although being married wasn’t a goal for me of any kind – in fact, I viewed it with a certain degree of scepticism – I enjoyed being married to my husband.

People talk about how awful the menopause is, and it was certainly challenging, but for me it had a tremendous sort of creative energy. There was a lot of moodiness and I found it difficult to know which feelings were real and which were just tornadoes going through me. That was hard, but it was also interesting and very rich.

When I teach, I find it really moving to see students respond to work that is very old – Katherine Porter or James Joyce or Chekhov. They can’t always, but sometimes I can tell it’s clicking with them and that’s a beautiful thing.

Climate change could wipe out the human race, or cripple the human race to the point that there won’t be people reading 100 years from now. Even if I don’t live to see it – and I suspect I will because there is monstrous longevity in my family – but even if I don’t, the idea of it is disturbing and I think it’s affecting everyone mentally that you can’t count on human history to go on the way it has.

I’m in touch with some former students and one of them wrote to me the other day and said she had a really nice dream of being in a class of mine. She had me dressed in this cream-coloured leather pants suit. She told me it was incredibly nurturing and calming… a great dream. And I thought: wow, that’s wonderful that I could have created such a nice space in somebody’s mind that as she’s having a hard time during the pandemic I would appear in her dream teaching about writing. I loved that she would find that comforting.

Lost Cat by Mary Gaitskill is published by Daunt Books at £8.99