The world is full of interesting phobias. Consecotaleophobia, for example, is the terror of chopsticks. Aulophobiacs are scared of flutes. But the irrational fear of my youth – “fear of dying in Peterborough” – has yet to be recognised.
As a teenager, Peterborough was the furthest I could usually make it in the world. It was 15 minutes from my home and I knew I would die there. Nuclear war. Heart attack. Burst appendix. The cause changed but the fear didn’t. I could list a million ways to kick the bucket. All intricately thought out and very, very real. Platform 5 of Peterborough station was the sum of all fears.
Chronic anxiety made me mainly housebound. I tried to move on. I lasted five days at Essex University. They had a special freshers’ week showing of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. That was a portent of doom. I couldn’t cope. I wore the same clothes for nearly a week and took the world’s most half-arsed overdose – four co-codamol. I didn’t want to live. I didn’t want to die either.
I returned home a failure. I did some work, but not much. While my mates were raving in Ko Samui my daily routine was based around watching This Morning.
Then my best friend Mort told me that Unesco wanted people to go and teach in summer schools in eastern Europe. Would I like to go with her? I said yes. I was terrified, but at least I’d be terrified with my best mate. I knew I had to do something with my unexpected “year off” so we went to Świdnica in south-west Poland.
Photograph: Allstar/20TH CENTURY FOX/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar
There are places in the world where we just fit and our skill set is appreciated. For me that was Poland in 1991. It had just emerged from behind the iron curtain. British pop was revered. I taught English by showing tapes of the BBC series The Rock ‘n’ Roll Years. MTV Europe was pumped in. One girl, transfixed by Paula Abdul’s hit Rush Rush, would dance vigorously, intensely, to it every night. This was a place I could understand. One student asked me to transcribe the song Why? by Bronski Beat. I did it word for word. I was useful. I was having a great time. We partied every night. We had Polish vodka with a buffalo label and a piece of long grass in it. I got drunk. I got very drunk.
I hit my head. I blacked out. I started to die. Yeah, the joke was on me. Finally I’d found a place I could vaguely cope with (there had been panic attacks that Mort had fended off) and now I was definitely dying.
An ambulance that resembled a converted Volvo estate came to pick me up. I made my verbal will, told Mort she could have my vinyl, and went to hospital.
There wasn’t much of a wait at Polish casualty. There were three other people and some bats fluttering merrily in the corner. I don’t think the bats were there for treatment. I remember thinking they probably had rabies though. If brain damage didn’t get me, incurable diseases would. A doctor who looked like a cross between Clark Gable and Gomez from The Addams Family appeared with perfect English. He was snarky yet sweet – an adorable combination. He examined me thoroughly, suggested possible mild concussion, told me to lay off the booze and prescribed bed rest for a few days. I went back to the school to die. I knew he was wrong.
As every minute passed and I remained conscious, a strange, new concept entered my mind. Perhaps I wasn’t going to die and my brain was wrong. Perhaps the next time my head did decide to go into red-alert mode I could remind it of this moment – of the moment I didn’t die in Poland.
I got out of bed and taught the Poles the Hokey Cokey and the Time Warp. They taught me exquisite folk dances. Eventually it was time to leave. One of my students gave me a one zloty coin. At the time there were 18,600 zlotys to the pound. It literally had no economic worth but she told me it was lucky and she wouldn’t forget what I’d taught her (mainly song lyrics).
Back home in Britain, Bryan Adams was still No1, but the world had changed entirely. I had not died. I had managed to do something good. For the first time ever, anxiety had not won. I walked to Morrisons in bare feet. I hadn’t spoken to my mum in weeks. You had to book an international phone call in Poland in those days. My mum looked almost pleased to see me. Things would definitely never be the same again.
Nearly 26 years later there is a one Zloty 1990 coin on a bracelet that is permanently around my wrist. It reminds me of three things – of a best friend who has always understood, of the kindness of strangers who saw me at my worst and tried to help and of the first time I truly told my brain it was talking utter bollocks.
• Rae Earl’s latest book, #Help: My Cat’s a Vlogging Superstar, is published in March
A moment that changed me: last night a Polish DJ saved my life | Rae Earl
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