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Dear Dad
I was not very happy to receive the letter that you wrote to me on August 6. Sometimes I really wonder if you mean what you say, especially when you suggest that I am paranoid and in need of counselling. I think you are very hard on me and you seem reluctant to offer any help or support when I need it. There have been times when I have been suffering badly from stress and you have said that I was mentally sick. You have always painted a very black picture of the Fitness Center, but I find it hard to believe that you can be so negative about it when you were the one who put me into it in the first place.* In fact, you seem to be very similar to a certain kind of people I have encountered recently who are, I like to say, on the Fitness "fringe". These people are very interested in Fitness but would never actually join up themselves. They are obsessed with the idea of power and strength that is associated with Fitness and have literally hated me for not living up to their expectations. (They expect Fitness women to be tough and stroppy). I would welcome any positive comments or suggestions on ways to improve my life. Thanks for the newspapers you have sent me recently.
Tessa Seventh letter...
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Tessa sent me this letter in August 1995, about four months before she was admitted to the psychiatric ward of a public hospital and diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia. It was followed, in early September, by a letter to her mother, in which she simply said: "I am flying to London on Malaysian Airlines via Kuala Lumpur. My flight details are..." The details were followed by a request that I send my "original (British) birth certificate or a certified photocopy (signed and sighted by a justice of the peace)". This document would have accompanied her application for a British passport — which would have enabled her to fly to London without having to buy a return ticket. I hated having to say "no" to her, but under the circumstances I couldn't do anything else. I was determined to ensure that if she did leave the country, she would go no farther than Australia — where I could more easily manage the situation, and arrange for her return to New Zealand, after she crashed. And within less than two months, that is exactly what happened.
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