A monologue from the play by Joanna Murray-Smith
BILLIE
You made sure! You! What was it you made sure of, exactly? Where were you? What did you secure for me? You have no idea!
You wouldn’t know the first thing about what was good for me, what I had, or missed, or lost! There are all kinds of liberties I might have had if my parents had been of my blood.
I could have hated them and bitched about them and left and come back and left, I could have betrayed them and abandoned them and returned and fought – all those privileges of a blood connection.
I could have pushed to be free of them because I would have known that I could never be free. We would have been blood.
Temper or whim or anger – nothing could have budged that one fact. If it’s not a blood tie, nothing’s dependable. All those shifts of feeling are so much more dangerous, because there is nothing to stop you from walking away.
There is nothing … biological … to beckon you back. That’s a big strain to live with. Somewhere good manners came into it.
I couldn’t be a real child, because I might hurt them and frighten them and frighten myself. So don’t tell me you ‘looked into them’.
You didn’t look anywhere. You didn’t know anything.
