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“You promise me!” I repeat. “You’ve been stranded here for three months! How long have they been promising you that someone else is coming?”
“We’ll call Suva again,” Tai says, raising his palms, trying to calm me. “We’ll explain what happened. They will come for us. It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”
“I’m not okay, okay!” I yell. “None of this,” I gesture wildly to the beach and the island, “is okay.”
“You need to focus on the positive,” Lacey says.
I blink at her, stunned that she’s throwing that back in my face so soon, though her voice is a little shaky, like she doesn’t really believe it. “You literally just told me that,” she adds. “Remember? All your positive posts, the shit you say on Facebook?”
“Well, maybe that was shit! Maybe I put on that happy face on social media because that’s the kind of person I wanted to be. It’s the kind of person I wanted people to see me as. But I’m not okay, not now, and…” I trail off. “I’ve never really been okay.”
“I find that hard to believe,” she says. “You’ve—”
“If you tell me once more that I luck into everything, especially now, I’m going to find something really disgusting in that jungle and I’m going to put it on your head!” I snap at her. “Contrary to what you thought, I didn’t have a perfect life. I kept people at a distance. I didn’t get attached to my relationships. I stayed with a job because it was easy. I pretended that it was fine and lied to myself because admitting the truth, that I wasn’t happy, would have been too hard. I kept up the persona and I fooled myself into believing it’s who I was. But it wasn’t.”
I look around. Tai is watching me carefully. Richard seems to be hanging on my every word, while Fred wanders down the beach, head low, hands in his pockets. I feel for him, I do. I want him off this godforsaken place as much I want that for myself.
Amazing how things can turn from paradise to pain when your future is at risk.
“I don’t even know who I am,” I say softly, feeling tears well up inside my throat. “I don’t. I thought I did but it was just the lies I told myself. So here I am, figuring it all out, and the most I got out of this is that I’m not okay!”
“None of us are okay right now,” Richard says quietly.
“Right!” I yell. “We aren’t. We’re fucked! We’re screwed! We’re shipwrecked and we don’t know when we’re going to get rescued.”
“But you could focus on the positive, that they know where we are, that help will come,” Lacey points out, suddenly taking on my old persona.
“No. YOU focus on the positive,” I tell her. “I’m choosing not to. I’m choosing to be a realist. I’m choosing, for once in my life, to put my hand up and say, I am not okay. I’m not okay with this, I’m not okay with my life, I’m not okay with anything.”
“You could try a different adjective than okay,” Richard mumbles.
“Fuck you, Mr. Thesaurus,” I tell him, giving him the finger.
Lacey gasps.
“There’s nothing wrong with using the same word,” I tell him indignantly, “and there’s nothing wrong with admitting to the world that you could use some help. Why, even here, do we have to look on the bright side all the fucking time?”
Okay, I realize now that I sound like a total hypocrite from what I was telling Lacey earlier but maybe I am a fucking hypocrite. Maybe I’ve always been one.
“Can’t we just for a minute take in the reality as it is and say, you know what? This is some fucked up shit and I’m scared and I don’t know how the hell we’re going to get out of it.”
“But we will get out of it,” Tai says.
I exhale loudly and sink to my knees, putting my head in my hands. “I know,” I mumble. “I know. We will. Because we’re humans and that’s what we’ll do. We’ll get out of this. But for once I would love to just admit that I’m scared and I’m worried and, at this moment, I’m weak. I don’t want to be that person that smiles for the selfies and puts up some bullshit inspirational caption when inside I feel broken. I want to be that person that admits, Hey! I’m Daisy and I’m broken and yet I’m still worthy too.”
Everyone is silent.
But my tears don’t come. I want them to. I want the release, especially as it feels like the greatest weight on my chest has been lifted, like I’ve had an anvil placed there my whole life. A weight that kept me carefully controlled, a weight that prevented me from opening up and taking a risk and becoming who I want to become.
