One year ago I met my Saving Grace. And as miraculously as she entered my life I understand that soon she must exit, as her work with me is done. For this I now steel myself, as it is I who must cut the ties. I must be the first to say 'goodbye'.
Ours is a strange story. To this day I cannot fathom why she bothered. But bother she did, in correspondence totalling some 6000 emails from across the world and across time zones. She was my guide and my companion. I think I owe her my life, and more.
Time differences didn't matter to me throughout this time, as day was night and night was day.
It started quite pathetically really. Lost in my own muddled world I had, by instinct for survival, turned all my energy and focus to one of my great loves: writing. Novel writing soon subsumed all other things, offering, as it did, a flash of hope for a future: a purpose to live; a new role?
My first attempt at a novel was titled Eat worms geranium. Intensely I had penned the first few chapters; but what to do with it? It was mostly set in my childhood, a place where at that time I commonly dwelt.
And then it occurred to me (exceedingly logical at the time) to approach my school English teacher for her thoughts. This would perhaps be normal enough, if not for the fact that she had been my teacher some three decades prior, in 1978. But this time gap did not faze me from making an overture. Nor the fact that she had subsequently become a successful novelist, nor the fact that she now lived overseas, nor — most significantly — that she probably wouldn't remember me from Adam.
And so it was in late February 2009 I emailed my secondary school English teacher, complete with an attachment of the first few chapters of my novel.
At some level I must have understood I was not acting normally, as I plainly stated to my teacher that I was not good with boundaries and I would fully understand if she did not reply, 'no message being the most complete message of all', I wrote.
To my surprise and elation, she did reply. And over ensuing months she replied and replied and replied. In the blackness she was there. In the blackness she guided me. She was to soon become everything in a world of nothingness. Up to 20 emails a day came her way. Emails which were at times confronting, often awkward and frequently challenging. Yet she did not shy away.
For four months of major depression she was my saving grace. An accident on our farm then seemingly tipped me that bit further over and she was still there ... advising me to get to hospital in the middle of the night here: day time where she was. I recall the hospital ED staff at 4am asking if anyone knew I was there. I said, 'Yes, she knows', omitting the fact that she was no relation at all and thousands of miles away. But to me, with phone in hand, she had never left my side.
She was soon joined by Psych Services staff and a few close friends and my lovely husband. And so it was that after an eight month battle with depression, I was to succumb (as I saw it at the time) to medication.
It's hard now to say what went on: what transpired between her and me in all those correspondences. I know I pushed the boundaries, but push as I might I could not get her to give up on me. She would take it in her stride and offer her wisdom, her calmness, her guidance. And when I was really off the mark and might later, in a rare flash of normality, realise this and lament, she would quietly reply that she appreciates how people occupy different head-spaces at such times and I should not worry myself.
'Worse things happen at sea' and 'There is nothing new under the sun' are two such replies I recall. So she would assure me that I should not feel my stated embarrassment or shame.
Psych Services spent the first few weeks finding the right drugs for me, with daily one to two-hour home visits and twice daily phone calls. At one stage, when one lot of unsuccessful meds was crossing over with replacement meds, I found myself trying to emerge from the fog and my greatest fear was in motion. I somehow found my phone and emailed her from my bed. An extract from 7 July 2009 reads:
'I am fading.'
'But this is a typical 3 am feeling. Snooze time again. Think of Gran; recite your poems if you can (even a few words will do) and drift off. xx'
'Okay.'
'Good girl. Teacher's pet. xx'
This exchange and many others meant the world to me ... literally my whole world. Gentle, caring and 'there'.
Many people would have run a mile when my first unstable email blundered through. In fact she had every reason to duck: her sister, just one year younger than herself, had suffered mental illness most of her life which culminated in her suicide at age 50 in 1996. But she didn't duck, and I am so grateful.
But now, one year on, the time has come for Teacher's Pet to let go and stand strong. A strength emanating in a large part from a precious relationship that happen-chanced my way 31 years after the classroom door closed. A relationship captured forever in 6000 emails in an Outlook Express Inbox.
Following a two decade career in rural journalism and editing, Fiona Douglas now breeds mini dachshunds and paint horses on her farm at Gippsland, Victoria where she lives with her husband and their teenage daughters.