A Different Way to Be

Prologue

There's no words for the pure intensity of the surging light that stabs violently into your eyes. It's burning ferociously at your eyelids that you shut tightly in a futile attempt to lessen the pain. Bewilderment has already settled into your hardened confusion. The ravenous fear is only just subsiding from awakening in alarm at being strapped down inside that confined space of one of the bunks. You can feel your voice stripped of its delicate ability. You suddenly realise that your careful choice of outfit for the journey is completely inappropriate. The raised heels of your polished shoes seem to have purposefully caught themselves on each of the small, metal steps that have taken you up to where you stand now on the top deck of the dirty coloured grey submarine. Somehow you've managed to keep your balance, as you dare to open your searching blue eyes. Vivid shades of green and blue descend to your pupils, revealing the true magnitude of your decision to come here.

This is very much not Portland; you come to conclude inside your head. Tragic waves of solemn regret are crashing into your disoriented questions, widening the hole that your hardened guilt has cut into you. Carefully you are helped down from the submarine's deck onto the wooden dock that juts away from the shore's edge. The firm hand is shaking yours now, as the small man introduces himself. Somehow you manage to find a polite smile from deep within yourself, and you're acutely aware that it's becoming harder and harder to produce a genuine smile.

You allow yourself to be led down the wooden planks of the dock, only adjusting your attention slightly to his words, as he rambles excitedly on at a quickened speed. The only time you visibly relax is when the ferreting silence starts to settle calmly in the light that fills the room you've been left in. This apparently is your house now; you're new home. You feel yourself swallow down at the single word, unable to comprehend its new meaning. Your swimming eyes drown the homely objects that have already taken their places inside the house. But there's nothing there that is yours, there's no homely warmth that you can evaporate with into a tepid bliss, not like back home in Miami. You feel your eyes slide shut, as the distant memories of home start to waft in through the breeze of the open window. You can picture every inch of your home, the way it shimmered in the city's morning light, and the way it fell into a calming darkness when the dusking hour came.

The familiar sting returns to your eyes, as you remember your sister and realise that she isn't here to comfort you back into your safety zone. It's moments before you actually acknowledge that the poison of your decision is rolling down your face in scolding tears. It seems that you have perfected the art of crying that waves of tears are invited to fall far too often. How are you to survive in a place like this by crying? You hastily push your hands across your face, angrily wiping up the mess that you've created in a moment of sheer desperation.

This is just work, you have to remind yourself, you'll be leaving in six months, it isn't forever. But already the watch face that catches the sunlight from the window starts to tease you with its incredibly slow hands, defiant that they won't move any faster. You have to force yourself to think of the positives. It's an extraordinary opportunity that you've been given. Your career would blossom wonderfully, you'd finally become acknowledged for the remarkable effort that you put into your work.

A small ironic laugh scraps at your throat. It's all you ever do. It's all you've ever done. You don't know anything else but work. You take some sort of relishing comfort in your work, because you know it will always be there, unlike everything else in your life. So many things have crumbled away into darkened ash before your very eyes, your family, your friends, your marriage. But work never strayed away from you, it never betrayed you, never gave you a reason to hate it.

You draw in a deep breath, realising that you're being completely absurd to think that work could replace all those people in your life with one simple decision. But it has, it even replaced your own sister. You're quite aware that if it wasn't for her, you'd be completely alone, surrounded by the cruel darkness of solitude. You're not sure what you've done to deserve such a brutally hard life and it makes you weaken even more under its powerful strain.

But you'll struggle through no matter what, because you remember what her last words were to you. She wants you to make them proud, her and the unborn miracle that you've provided for her. You can't fail the one person that fills your whole life, you just can't. So you'll strive to fit in to the new world you've been brought to, you'll work so hard to make people like you.

You're more than conscious of the fact that your sister can't hold all the hearts in your playing cards, the spare ones are just left abandoned on the floor of your insecurities, like they have for many years. There had been someone, long ago, that had stolen the rest of the pack from you without realising, even promised you that he would hold onto them for the rest of his life, but his vow had unravelled itself into a bitter trick, only for him to throw your precious cards to the prevailing winds, ripping apart your belief in true happiness.

So you've decided to lock them away again, somewhere deep inside you, where no one hardly looks, because most people are frightened away before they even delve beneath the hardened mask. You feel surprised that no one has called your bluff yet, but you know better than to question it. It's safer to wear the poker face, so you continue to wear it. It's been so long that that you don't know how to wear anything else.

You're determined to stay in the shadows of everyone else. Attention has never suited you. Your scarlet laced cheeks always did have a way of betraying your uneasiness to be in the spotlight. You'll do what you're told, because it's impossible to ignore the unsteady weakness in your fragile nature when you're scolded for doing the wrong thing, for failing. You'll do all this, because you know that in six months time this island won't matter to you, the people surrounding you won't matter. You know you'll be with your sister again. It's just six months.