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

by Maggie O'Farrell

What happened to that girl, and what so nearly happened to me, is not something to be lightly articulated, moulded into anecdote, formed into a familiar spoken groove to be told and retold over a dinner table or on the telephone, passed from teller to teller. It is instead a tale of horror, of evil, of our worst imaginings. It is a story to be kept battened down in some wordless, unvisited dark place. Death brushed past me on that path, so close that I could feel its touch, but it seized that other girl and thrust her under.

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.

Travelling at speed, thousands of feet above ground, in the cabin of an aircraft, induces an altered state of mind. Things that may have been puzzling you perhaps come into focus, as if the lens of a camera has been twisted. You may find, sliding into your mind, answers to questions that have long eluded you. As you gaze out at the illusory landscape of alto-stratus mountains, you may catch yourself thinking: ah, of course, I hadn’t realised that before.

That the things in life which don’t go to plan are usually more important, more formative, in the long run, than the things that do.

There is an odd relief in being alone. I glance around at people clinging to their companions, their relatives, crying, screaming, holding on tight. I grip the seat arms and tell myself, here it comes. There is no flashing of life before the eyes. No final reckoning takes place, no onslaughts of wisdom, no last-minute wishes or requests or prayers. I don’t think about all the other times I have managed to hoodwink this moment, slip from its grasp. I am suffused, preoccupied, distracted by the physical, the deafening noise of the aircraft, of people’s panic, the assaulting drag of the fall, the bracing of my body for the inevitable impact.

The people who teach us something retain a particularly vivid place in our memories.

I try to stand up but it seems that I can’t, not yet, so I kneel in the shallows, letting little harmless waves surge past me, back and forth. I straighten my swimwear, watch the water drawing the blood off my skin and whirling it away, as if it has need of it, as if it has some purpose in mind for it. I look about me, at the mimosa trees showering the ground with their yellow dust, at a cirrus cloud illuminated at its frayed edges, at the borders of the empty towels on the sand, the way their rectangular redness pulses against the ochre earth.

Something is moving within me, deep in the coiled channels of my stomach, something with claws, with fangs, with evil intent. It is gaining strength, I can feel it, drawing it off me. It is as though I have swallowed a demon, a restive one that turns and fidgets, scraping its scales against my innards. I must fold into myself, breathe, grip my hands into fists until the spasm passes.

That school trip not only fed but gave a focus to the restlessness I’d felt all my life. At last I had found a way to satisfy it, to meet it; at last I understood it. It had baffled and confounded me for years, the dissatisfaction, the constraint of the everyday, the tedium and scratchiness of routine, the irritating prickle of sameness.

Neural pathways become ingrained, automatic, if they operate only by habit. They are highly attuned to alterations, to novelty. New sights, sounds, languages, tastes, smells stimulate different synapses in the brain, different message routes, different webs of connection, increasing our neuroplasticity. Our brains have evolved to notice differences in our environment: it’s how we’re alerted to predators, to potential danger. To be sensitive to change, then, is to ensure survival.

I consider myself steeped in luck, in good fortune to have avoided the fate the doctors decreed for me. I have been showered with shamrocks, my pockets filled with rabbits’ feet, found the crock of gold at the end of every rainbow. I could not have asked for more from life, to have been spared what might have been.