Forged with Flames (22 page)

On the other hand, the reaction of strangers could be surprisingly understanding. I recall one time when I was out walking our Collie, Ebony. Three children aged about ten or twelve started following us. I was wondering what was going to transpire, when one of them asked in a really nice way, ‘What happened to you?' then said, ‘Oh, that would have hurt', when I explained.

The brown suit I was to wear in some degree or other until after my final surgery in 1989—five years later—was, in reality, a place where I could hide. I hated it for making me different and for its discomfort, but it did the job of covering up my raised and red burns scars which looked far worse than the suit itself. As I gradually discarded pieces of it, I realised that I was even more vulnerable without it. While I eventually became used to hearing, ‘Were you born like that?' or ‘My goodness, what on earth happened to you?' when people saw my scars, I could never shrug off the laughter or the barely contained sniggers.

One unforgettable day, fifteen months after the first experience at school, a boy of about ten in the same playground looked me right in the face and said, ‘Oh, yuck'. Although I understood he was just a child, reacting with a child's honesty, it was the most devastating reaction I would ever have to face. When I looked in a mirror later, his reaction was exactly how I felt about myself. This comment cut through any defences I had built up and hurt me so deeply that I've never been able to fully cast it aside.

I began to appreciate how difficult it is for people to get inside someone else's head if that person's experience is beyond their own imagination. A friend once told me, for example, that her husband had wondered how I could go out looking the way I did. She was trying to convey how brave he thought I was, but the remark just flattened me. My counsellor told me not to worry about it.

‘It's just the same for me being bald. Everyone stares, but you just can't let it get to you.'

I was tempted to point out that there was a bit of a difference. Instead, I retreated, resuming my careful approach to sharing my thoughts openly while trying hard to manufacture an ‘I don't care what you think of me' outlook. However, I really cared terribly. What I would have given to have my old face back again.

33

THE SCREAM

B
y the beginning of 1985, Terry and I were experiencing difficulties in our relationship. A rift had formed in the marriage as Terry, in his protective way, tried to take over, and I, in my independent way, resisted. As a consequence we stopped communicating the way we used to and became awkward with one another. We both knew—but dared not say it—that we could never return to our former close relationship. It wasn't that we didn't love or care for each other, but the pressures of the past couple of years had been huge, too huge. Terry felt that both of us had endured as much as we could cope with. So mid-way through the year, we sought help from a skilled clinical psychologist called Paul, who had once been a Baptist minister. My respect and trust in him grew with each visit and I, at least, thought we were making positive strides. At first Paul worked with Terry and I together; later he invited us to have sessions with him separately.

Although the reason Paul came into my life was not a happy one, it did have an unexpected consequence to it: he was about
to become the only person with whom I'd ever come close to conveying my innermost feelings about how terrible the fires were and how profoundly they affected me, psychologically and emotionally. I had previously shared my thoughts with Sheila who had a different take on the fires, and Geoff, the minister, who was a trusted counsellor but not a trained psychologist. Paul could see that talking wasn't really helping me to deal with the aftermath of the trauma in a way that would lead to a mental and emotional healing. He would suggest another way of expressing what the fires meant. A novel way.

One day when I was seeing him on my own, he said that ever since we'd met he'd felt as if I had a huge scream inside me. Would I like him to help release it? Me, scream? About the closest I'd ever come to raising my voice was yelling at the dogs to stop barking. He told me to go away and think about it and make a decision. No pressure.

How would I ever even start screaming? I wondered. After considering my options, which were not exactly crowding in on me, I decided to give it a shot.

In the next session, Paul and I established that the scream really was indeed related to the fires. Then we set about releasing it. I looked at him and thought hard about opening my mouth. We were sitting in armchairs in his small consulting room, a shelf of psychology books on one wall, some prints hanging on the others and an obligatory box of tissues on a side table. I looked from one print to another. We sat some more. I drew air into my lungs and lifted my shoulders but nothing happened. Almost two hours passed and nothing. The session ended. At the end of the next session I was no closer to being relaxed enough to let go and scream. I sensed that Paul was becoming frustrated
and I know I certainly was. He then suggested hitting one of the cushions as a warm-up—but I still couldn't scream.

Finally, when it was looking as if we'd have to abandon the plan, he struck on the idea of screaming himself and if I felt able to, I could join in. I still had trouble, but this helped; at last my scream let loose.

I screamed and screamed and screamed. The screams came from deep in my solar plexus, expressing all the pain, anguish and heartache of Ash Wednesday in ways words never could. Something primal took over. I was shaking, taking great gulps until I finally stopped. Trembling and exhausted, I gradually calmed down. I looked at Paul and managed to smile. Such relief! The feeling of being alone, of grappling with this huge burden had subsided, like a tide going out.

I was on the road to healing.

34

ON THE BRINK, AGAIN

O
n a balmy late summer day in 1986, I took Sarah to Emerald Lake Park, a short drive away, for a one-on-one day out. Sarah was eight and really enjoyed these times when we'd go shopping or see a movie or go for a drive together. I needed it, too. My marriage to Terry was finally unravelling. We had tried persistently in the best way we knew to bridge the widening gulf between us but to no avail. I felt frustrated but most of all intensely sad, as I know Terry did.

The park was quiet this day and we decided to walk along one of the little bush tracks that surrounded the lake. Sarah was talking away in a singsong voice, trailing a little, when suddenly she stopped then exclaimed, ‘Look, Mum!' All around her, and for as far back as we could see, was the most glorious stream of butterflies. Neither of us had ever seen anything like it. They were all kinds of colours—little soft brown ones, white, yellow and orange ones—masses of them. We stood and took it all in, awed, then followed the many walks around the lake park, thin trails between the trees. Shafts of light streamed through a forest of pine trees as we passed beneath the distinctively fragrant
canopy. The butterflies continued to flutter around us when we emerged, alighting for a while on a branch or flower, then flitting off again, some linked in pairs, tumbling through the air. Neither of us wanted it to end. The encounter became a vivid reminder that the world could become a joyous place in an instant; something simple and beautiful could shine through unhappy times. We left the park refreshed and lighter.

By March 1986, Terry and I had separated, three years after Ash Wednesday. The once unthinkable had happened. We explained simply to each of the girls that we just couldn't live in the same house any more, at pains to impress on them that we still loved them and that Terry would be seeing them every weekend. I'll never forget the look of anguish that crossed Sarah's face as we told her. She was in her bedroom sitting on her bed reading when I asked if we could speak to her. She said very little but her face and her eyes expressed her distress. Rachel was seven at the time and I'm sure it was hard for her, too, but her reaction was more difficult to read. Terry initially moved out into a rented unit in Cranbourne which was close enough for easy access to the children.

After the marriage ended, I was plagued with guilt thinking that I'd failed at something that had mattered so much to me. Never mind that we'd been told how common it was for marriages to fail after such trauma, I should have been able to keep our family together. I tortured myself endlessly with, ‘Maybe if I'd… If only I'd… If I hadn't… And how could I live with being single? Divorce was something that other people did, wasn't it?'

I dared not think too much about what lay beyond or of a life alone; nevertheless, it felt as if there was no end to the pain
and struggle. For the first time ever, I wondered how my life would have turned out if I hadn't met Terry in London and come to Australia. I'd kept in touch with two girlfriends, Anne and Joyce, from Nelson Grammar days, both of them married with children and still living in areas where they'd grown up. I imagined myself there, able-bodied, as I would have been. I pictured myself shopping in towns still quintessentially English, with their core of stone buildings and cobbled lanes. I thought of the everlasting deep green of the trees. I imagined having the four children I once wanted with a loving husband by my side.

The fantasy was short-lived. I realised that I was always going to be too adventurous for a life in village England, and would a more predictable life have been a happy one, anyhow? Anne, like me, had separated from her husband. I didn't regret being here—despite all that had happened. I love Australia, I thought. And I would never have had Sarah and Rachel…

My main concern at this stage was to keep the girls with me in the house in Berwick when we separated to give them stability and continuity. I was able to do this, although I had to mask my constant battle against fatigue now that I didn't have a partner to share the burden. A simple activity like preparing dinner was difficult because of the exhaustion. I loved being a mother and gave the girls a good deal of attention, but always felt inadequate, wondering if I was listening to them enough, being patient enough and so forth. True to form, I never communicated to anyone the struggle involved in running the household by myself; I was afraid of someone questioning my capability as a mother to take care of the girls. That truly would have been the last straw. Consequently, most days I'd hope I could just keep going and scrape through to bedtime.

As the weeks passed it became more and more difficult to continue wearing a bright face and assure everyone that I was managing, while also giving the girls what they needed from me. It was a strain too, not only to handle but also conceal the grief I was feeling at the loss of my marriage. I told myself that I could never marry again nor love the way I'd loved Terry. But no matter how much I tried to block out the grief and anguish, it kept seeping back, overtaking every part of my being. I could think of nothing to look forward to. The latest facial surgery that I'd so anticipated was a bitter let down. It was not nearly as successful at restoring my face to some semblance of its previous form as I had hoped. I stolidly continued about the business of being a mother and friend, hiding the dull ache inside until I could shrink into myself, away from the world, each evening. As I did, the same refrain kept recurring: how can I keep going?

I started contemplating the liberation of not having to struggle any more, of letting go of life and stopping the pain. At first I was appalled with myself; I'd always felt judgemental about people taking their own lives, especially if they had children. I thought of the devastating effect it would have on the girls and on the many other people close to me. But then the emotional pain became so deep and so entrenched that even these obstacles could be set aside in my mind. I had cried out for death in the firestorm and begged to be allowed to die at the height of my pain in hospital, but this was worse. I understood with a profound clarity and empathy how others might feel when they attempted to take their own lives; the all-encompassing feeling that to die was less painful than to live with problems and despair that seemed to have no end.

I started to plan how to end my own life.

The September holidays were close and the girls were both due to go away to camp for a week. If I were to commit suicide, this period alone in the house would be the time to do it. I was so weary that my friends unquestioningly accepted my request that I have a quiet week to myself. I'd also made sure that no one would be concerned if they couldn't contact me.

As I drove the girls to the Shiloh Christian camp, near Grantville in Gippsland, all I could feel was a creeping numbness. My friend Audrey and her youngest daughter, Carolyn, were in the car with us as Carolyn was going to the camp too. I chatted to Audrey in a normal sort of way about everyday things. We travelled along the South Gippsland Highway through the canal country around Koo Wee Rup, past muddy waterways and dead flat paddocks. Audrey said something about Westernport, to our right. I nodded blankly. The miles rolled on. The girls talked to Carolyn happily in the back seat about the upcoming week away together. It wasn't sinking in that I may not see them again. Something inside me had switched off. I turned the car into the camp, passed through the slope of woodlands at its entrance and drew to a stop in the car park. Beyond us, low-slung lodges and cabins sprawled amongst the eucalypts. This is where the girls would be when I died, I thought, detached. Even the enveloping whoosh of wind through gums overhead—normally a sound that would have me on high alert—triggered nothing.

I said goodbye to my daughters as if it were any other day.

The next morning I opened my eyes thinking of death, serene. Now that the time had come when I could act, my mind stilled. The relentless pressure of having to keep managing had eased with the knowledge that I could take matters into my own hands now and stop the pain. No longer was death a dark force,
lurking. It had become a benign presence I might call on to help me. I lay in bed enjoying the peace of being alone. When you finally come to the point of thinking ‘this could be my last day', the pressure is off. All the angst has come before.