I Am, I Am, I Am

by Maggie O'Farrell

have been over and over that moment at the desk in the police station, asking myself, was there anything I could have done differently, anything I might have said that would have changed what happened next? I could have said: I want to see your supervisor, I want to see the person in charge. I would do this now, aged forty-three, but then? It didn’t occur to me it was possible.

You develop antennae for violence and, in turn, you devise a repertoire of means to divert it. The school I went to seemed steeped in it. The threat, like smoke, filled the corridors, the halls, the classrooms, the aisles between desks. Heads were smacked, ears were gripped, chalk dusters were thrown, with smarting accuracy;

Because, I was thinking, because I cannot begin to say. Because I cannot articulate what dangers lie around corners for you, around twisting paths, around boulders, in the tangles of forests. Because you are six years old. Because there are people out there who want to hurt you and you will never know why. Because I haven’t yet worked out how to explain these things to you. But I will.

I tell my children about these things, now, and they look at me, wide-eyed. You did that? they ask. Not me, I say, but someone I was with. There will be times, I tell them, when you’re teenagers and you’re out and someone will suggest something that you know is a bad idea and you will have to make a choice whether to join in or leave. To go with the group or against it. To speak up, to speak out, to say, no, I don’t think we should do that. No, I don’t want this. No, I’m going home.

I have never found it difficult to abandon a group, to go against the alpha male or female. I have never much cared for gangs, for social tribes, for fitting in. I have known since I was very young that the in-crowd isn’t my crowd; they are not my people.

What I should have said was: you’re right, it was a stupid thing to do. I should have said: the thing is, I have this compulsion for freedom, for a state of liberation. It is an urge so strong, so all-encompassing that it overwhelms everything else. I cannot stand my life as it is. I cannot stand to be here, in this town, in this school.

Infidelity is as old as humanity: there is nothing about it you can think or say that hasn’t been thought or said before.