Last night I made myself watch the evocative drama Adolescence –
For those of you unfamiliar, the drama starts with a house being raided by a SWAT team, arresting a cute little 13-year-old boy on suspicion of murder.
So yeah, not your usual light viewing. And for me, as a sensitive – and fully aware of how programmes can influence and affect us – and now, 24 hours on and I still find myself ruminating, and quietly crying, I have no regrets in investing those four hours of my life, in discomfort.
I was compelled. As a mum of three boys – one 13 and the others closely following – I knew it to be an important watch. Perhaps part of me wanted to be reassured that this could never happen to me, or my boys. But what I was left with was something so much deeper.
You could see it from the beginning. The lead D.I. had a son in the same school as Jamie, the accused, and Katie, the victim. The first scene opens with the D.I. getting a text from his son saying he had a stomach ache and didn’t want to go to school – something all of us parents worry about. Is he ok? Is something happening? Is this laziness, or is there something deeper…? 5 minutes later he’s broken down the door, stormed the house and arrested the child from the comfort of his bed.
As he leads the investigation, he is looking for signs – signs that this could unequivocally mean: they are other. There must be something wrong; From the dad, from the kid, from the circumstances. Signs that might help him understand why it happened.
He didn’t find it.
They lived in a normal house on a normal street. They had regular jobs. A family of four – a girl of 16 and a boy of 13. The parents were in love, and loving.
There must be some mistake.
By the end of the first episode, you knew there wasn’t.
Maybe there was something wrong with him?
As a psychotherapist, episode 3 got me, deep. The interview between the psychologist and Jamie, we are invited in, watching their fifth meeting – the rapport was built, they trusted each other, they had a rhythm.
What did she see?
I battled in my brain as I watched him flip. I was hoping to see signs. I wanted it to be because of something. She asked about his dad, and grandad. She asked about what he thought was manly.
The kid was just trying to make sense of the world.
A kid who thought himself:
ugly,
and stupid,
and not special.
A kid who tried so hard to make his dad proud, and thought the only way was to be good at sports.
The dad loved him, unconditionally, but he didn’t see that. So perhaps he sought solace from elsewhere – from the internet – where he could find some sense in a confusing world.
Where it got really uncomfortable was this:
What I saw? He was just a pretty normal kid.
And small, seemingly insignificant circumstances began to stack. Trying to find his place. Having feelings for girls. Wanting to ‘be a man’.
Following women on the internet that he didn’t think he ever had a chance with – the untouchables.
Being brave and asking a girl out.
Being humiliated at school.
Being silently bullied on Instagram with nothing more than emojis.
Taking to his room.
He’s safe there, isn’t he?
He could have been anyone.
My heart, as a parent, was of course with them. How could they cope? What would they do? Was it their fault?
(Subtext – what can I do to stop it from happening to me?)
What I was left with was a sense of helplessness.
They were loving.
They were kind.
They bought him nice things.
They fed him and watered him.
They took him to sports.
They got him to school.
They did their best. Like we all do – our best.
The best we can with what we have. Like we do.
And that best still resulted in… this.
The dad – he even fought his own demons so he could do better by his child. But did he do better? Would the harsh discipline he faced as a child have stopped this? or made it worse?
How could this happen?
That’s the real question.
How…?
And the dirty undercurrent to all of that is:
When we find how, when we find the motive, we can wrap it all up in a little bow and go to sleep at night knowing that something like this can never happen to us.
That they must be a little bit evil, or a little bit broken.
Maybe they were –
but no more than any of the rest of us.
The show didn’t wrap it up in any bow.
We were left with the tattered ends and the crumpled paper, being witness only to four hours in the life of this huge incident.
In fact, we didn’t even know what happened next. The trial, the fallout, the sentence.
We saw a glimpse, a moment, towards the end of Jamie taking some responsibility.
But all I could hear was him pleading:
IT WASN’T ME
IT WASN’T ME
No, It wasn’t him.
Not the true, real him.
Not the sweet boy.
Not the child.
Not the soul.
It was a thing within him.
And that thing… could be in any of us.
A thing that was let out, and let loose.
A thing that didn’t realise the consequences.
I don’t think Jamie really knew what happened.
IT WASN’T ME.
He pleaded. He knew. The real me wouldn’t do this.
‘I was just trying to do what I thought was right.
I am a man. I was showing her not to humiliate me – that’s what women want, isn’t it?
And I was hurt. And I did the right thing.
And you humiliated me. So I wanted to do the same to you.
I didn’t know that this would make you die.
That this would then happen.
In the games we play, it doesn’t end like this.
I just wanted to scare her.
I didn’t know.
What happened?
IT WASN’T ME.
That’s the thing with the shadow.
It is blind to us.
It lives in the unconscious.
Waiting.
Collecting shame, confusion, unmet needs –
until it finds a crack to leak through.
Until it tries to protect us in the worst way.
We take the shame and the discomfort.
We take the huge feelings.
We take the dark thoughts.
And we bundle it all up in a bag
and hope it goes away.
The look of disappointment from your dad, when he tried to hide it.
Shame.
The feelings you have about the girl no one else likes.
Shame.
The belief that you are ugly and no one will ever like you.
Shame.
The rejection and the humiliation.
Shame.
All wrapped up in a bag that you end up lugging behind you –
until one day that knife cuts so deep
that it all comes spilling out
into a mess
of rage.
In this case, with dire consequences.
Consequences that were not even conceivable from this 13-year-old’s head.
how could it be?
The thing with the shadow?
It doesn’t want to be hidden, forced down, ignored.
It wants to be seen.
Like all of us, really.
I think that was what the psychologist saw at the end.
I think that was why she got upset.
I think what she realised was just that:
He was a good kid.
He was smart.
He was even quite pleasant to be around.
He was pretty… ‘normal’.
She looked at him after he had lost it –
after we heard him accidentally admitting what I did.
He flipped.
He tried to scare her.
He tried to take back power.
To keep her there.
To show her that he is significant. That he does matter.
That he is a ‘man’.
And she left, and watched him, in the room, on his own.
What did she see?
I wonder that still, all these hours later.
What did she see?
I think she saw him settle himself.
Do his best to calm himself down.
Put on his identity of the good boy. Of the good student.
Of the – OK, let’s start again.
Like a video game.
Let’s reset. Restart.
Level 3 begins again.
She came back into the room.
He was calm.
He was centred.
He didn’t want to be in trouble.
I deserved it, he said.
Small consequence for a small action.
A little remorse.
I think that’s what scared her.
Why she terminated the sessions, then.
She had empathy for him.
She couldn’t find his broken.
She saw herself in him.
And realised that what he really wanted was to be seen.
Like most of us do.
Isn’t that what we want?
To be seen.
To be heard.
To be felt in the world.
For what we truly are.
And at 13 – how can we possibly know who that is?
Wow… 30 years later, do we still know who we truly are?
And this act?
Well – it got him seen.
It got him felt.
It got him heard.
Which was what he wanted.
But not like this.
IT WASN’T ME.
And the parents left.
With all the blame.
And all the shame.
Could we have done better?
“I’m sorry, son.”
The heartbreaking end.
And us?
Well, we are left – the viewer, the picker-up of the pieces.
Without the bow.
With all the questions.
With some threads of hope, perhaps, that we are different.
But we aren’t.
Not really.
We are them.
They are us.
There is no ‘other’.
Because maybe the scariest thing of all
is realising –
it could have been any of us.
And that is the uncomfortable truth we have to live with.
I wrote this in the morning after watching this. I cried in my car. I cried for all of us. For the boy. For the girl. For the parents. For my children, our children. For us all doing our best. I cried because this is the collective, and this is a possibility. I cried because I know, we all know, that deep down we could all do better, even though we are doing our best. So I cried, with gratitude for the life I find myself in and the choices I have made. I cried with hope, that, this will help save lives.