When they say being a masked crimefighter is for the young, they don't know how right they are. When I started out in this game, I was just out of my teens: young, pretty and athletic. I dressed in a skimpy costume; my excuse was that it allowed me to move quickly, that it didn't hinder me when I moved. The real reason that I wore it was because I wanted to show off. I liked the attention it brought me, the looks that people gave me as I ran past them in the night. My mentor - the big-shot vigilante - told me that it was demeaning, but I laughed and told him that it was empowering.

Then, one day, I looked in the mirror. My mentor had died, the victim of some two-bit punk with a gun bought from a back-street dealer. I went to the funeral, then I cried for a week. When I put the costume back on, it didn't look right. It made me look like an innocent kid, straight out of suburbia. It didn't reflect how I had grown, matured and changed over the years. If I wanted people to take me seriously, I had to move out from under my mentor's shadow.

So, I dressed like a man. I hid myself beneath armour and a mask. I covered my eyes with reflective lenses and pulled a hood over my head. Then I hit the streets again. This time there was no wise-cracking, no playing games. This time I meant business. I wanted to strike fear into the hearts of those who would do wrong, to make sure that they would wake up in the middle of the night screaming my name in terror. Most of all, I wanted to make them pay for what they had done to their victims, what they had done to my mentor and - most of all - what they had done to me.

Then, one day, I looked in the mirror. I had been following a lead on a case: a nasty one that had made the headline news for a week. My plan was to find a weak spot in the gang responsible and exploit it. I picked my target carefully, followed him to his home. I wanted to show him how vulnerable he was, how badly I could hurt him, and that nobody would help him. That was my mistake. He had a family. I saw their tear-streaked faces looking at me, the fear in their eyes; and I saw my face, masked and implacable. I left, disgusted at what I had done and what I had become.

So, I gave up the mask and the night. If I wanted to change the world, to make things better, then I had to change myself. I took the assets that my mentor had left me - all the money, the shares and property - and I turned them around. I used them to found a charity, one dedicated to social works. Of course, it was impossible to do all this by myself. I had to take on staff, appoint managers, delegate tasks. But I was always there, guiding the organisation towards its goals.

Then, one day, I looked in the mirror. I saw how much I had aged, how my face had become lined and my body had lost its edge. And, I saw behind me the young people coming up through my organisation, with their souls hungry for power and advancement. I listened to them when they told me that I had become old and that my goals were unrealistic. In the end, I stepped down from my leadership rather than be removed.

So, I am now retired. My life is comfortable, I have no financial worries. I spend my time reading learned books and writing theses. I know that things have changed. The people I fought against in the past have mellowed with age and become respectable citizens. They complain about how the young have no respect for them, how they have been replaced and discarded. But there is nothing they can do about it. Life has passed them by, and the glass ceiling has moved up and away from them.

Then, I look in the mirror.