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Dear Mum & Dad
I feel as though I'm getting a bad reputation and that it's becoming a serious problem. Have you heard anything about me? Do you have any advice? Please write. Tessa Fifth letter... |
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Tessa sent us this letter in July 1995, about five months before she was admitted to the psychiatric ward of a public hospital and diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia. The tone of this letter — and of the next two — stands in stark contrast to that of the letters of February and March. At the time, I thought that these more moderate letters possibly represented an improvement in Tessa's condition. They didn't, and I am now inclined to see them as a final attempt, at some level, to hold things together. In the first six months of 1995, she realised that something was amiss, as her mind was, she said after her recovery, "too busy". But she also thought that she was becoming cleverer, as she believed she was increasingly able to discern the hidden meanings of life's events and phenomena.
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