I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death

by Maggie O'Farrell

How should I have articulated to this policeman that I could sense the urge for violence radiating off the man, like heat off a stone?

That sensibility will run in your veins, like an antibody. You learn fairly quickly to recognise the approach of these sudden acts against you: that particular pitch or vibration in the atmosphere. You develop antennae for violence and, in turn, you devise a repertoire of means to divert it.

Because there are people out there who want to hurt you and you will never know why.

the virus never inhaled, the assailant never encountered, the path not taken. We are, all of us, wandering about in a state of oblivion, borrowing our time, seizing our days, escaping our fates, slipping through loopholes, unaware of when the axe may fall.

“I know a cure for everything: salt water…in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.”