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

by Maggie O'Farrell

I had the misfortune of not speaking with a local accent, of being able to read before I got there, of having an appearance that,

They are out late. They are bored, in that mind-shrivelling way peculiar to this stage in life. They are sixteen or thereabouts.

They are, all of them, waiting because that is what teenagers who grow up in seaside towns do. They wait. For something to end, for something to begin.

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.

you see, I have to concentrate everything on freeing myself and nothing can get in my way. I cannot bear for anything or anyone to slow me down, distract me, fetter me.

I found myself alone. Fearsomely, unaccountably, thrillingly alone: a child on a track in the middle of a remote island.

The world was suddenly still; nothing was being required of me; I could stand in the quiet of my own skin.

I would have been a terrible academic: I am too volatile, too skittish, too impatient.

You and me both, Maggie O!

My grades, and my ability to produce them out of a hat, were the only thing I had, the only thing I was good at. I was not amiable or affable and never would be,

“The thing about childbirth,” he slurred to me, in a confidential tone, gesturing with his wine glass towards my stomach, “is that it’s either all fine or it completely fucks up. There’s nothing in between.”

I was slipping away, alone, surrounded by people.

sometimes I get weary of being the only sober one in a crowd?

Physiotherapy Outpatients, the staff and the patients I met there, are the reason I am ambulatory today. That they didn’t give up on me, that they believed I was capable of movement, of motion, of recovery, when the doctors didn’t, meant that I walked. If someone says you can do something, if you can see they really believe it, it puts that possibility within your grasp.

I was loved there, I was special, I was accepted, I was cheered on: everyone there wanted only the best for me. It gave me no preparation, no sense of what was waiting for me when I eventually went back to school, where people would call me a spaz, a moron, a joey, would demand to know what was wrong with me or what they would catch from me.

“The best way out is always through,” and I believe this to be true but, at the same time, if you can’t go through, you can always go around.

When you engender a life, you open yourself to risk, to fear. Holding my child, I realised my vulnerability to death: I was frightened of it, for the first time.