The MP talks about fearing for her life in Cambodia, getting arrested and how Westminster makes her swear more than she should

A girl named Rachel transformed my childhood. Life was safe, suburban and comfortable, but ours was a home without books. I met her aged 11, and she introduced me to the joys of poetry and literature. It opened my mind to ideas I could never have dreamed of.

I organised a strike at my secondary school. Lessons were cancelled, but we weren’t allowed to go home. In retrospect, I can see the safeguarding issues that might have created, but at the time it felt the greatest injustice.

In 1986 I had my lightbulb moment. I was reading a book called Seeing Green instead of writing my PhD, and suddenly everything clicked into place. I marched from my grotty bedsit in Clapham to the Green party office – a broom cupboard above a Chinese restaurant – and signed up there and then.

Getting caught in the crossfire in Cambodia made me fear for my life. I was working for an NGO in the early 1990s distributing supplies. I was engaged to my now husband and all I could think as I hid under a table was: “Oh shit, we should have got married before I came.”

Petra Kelly is my inspiration, one of the founders of the German Greens. There’s a photo of her on the day she entered the Bundestag, wearing jeans and holding sunflowers. There’s a sense of new life, bringing a fresh way of doing things, to the chambers of politics.

Being an MP for a place you love is an extraordinary gift. Yes, there’s the aesthetic of Brighton – the sea, the Lanes, the Downs – and I’ve never felt a stronger sense of community. But it’s a tale of two cities with massive inequalities, which urgently need to be addressed.

I’ve been arrested a few times. The most high-profile instance was when protesting at the fracking site in Balcombe. It’s an industry which will undermine our chances of tackling climate change. I don’t take civil disobedience lightly, but protecting our climate felt bigger than a law that says don’t sit down.

The Green party is full of inspirational people, but they need to be given space to shine. That’s the primary reason for me standing down as leader.

My private life doesn’t feel relevant to my work, but I know I couldn’t do what I do without my husband and family, that’s what matters. I give myself to politics, I keep my family for me.

I felt so lucky to cross the threshold of parliament as the UK’s first Green MP, riding the wave of decades of work by others. It felt monumental, a chance to change the course of history, and a bloody long time coming, too. It’s this I’ll always be most proud of.

Don’t tread on one another’s dreams, that’s the secret to a happy relationship. We celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary a couple of weeks ago. We try to make the space for each other to follow our passions, whatever they may be.

So much time is wasted in parliament. When I was an MEP votes took a matter of seconds, but in Westminster we spend 20 minutes each time walking through the lobbies. It’s archaic and it’s stupid. It makes me use the F-word more than I should.

I’m still learning to make time for things that matter to me. I want to spend more of my life in nature and with my family, to read more books and explore the spiritual aspects of life. The thing I am most afraid of is running out of time.

We still haven’t woken up to the dangers of climate change. What else does nature have to throw at us? The hurricanes, the heatwaves, the droughts, the floods. There’s a disjuncture between the mass of evidence, and the inability of governments to show leadership. It’s a grotesque abdication of responsibility.