FAR AWAY ISLAND

After twenty-three months of therapy, Sammie finally agreed to say goodbye to her far away island, the safe place she'd spent carefully constructing with her psychotherapist to provide sanctuary from the demons that had plagued her mind so relentlessly over a decade or more.

They'd built it all up together from scratch, from turquoise lagoons to fairytale forests and now it even had its own miniature transport system for those days when Sammie was too mentally exhausted to climb to the summit. She'd also introduced a force field that could withstand any aggressive attacks from anxiety or depression so Sammie could focus on other things like reclaiming positive memories of the past that had been buried like treasure inside deep caves and positive projections of the future for when she was ready to set sail on that voyage. Of course that would mean leaving her island for good for as helpful as it was she knew deep down it was still a diversion from moving on with her life and facing reality.

"Do I really have to leave it though?" Sammie asked Jane her psychotherapist for the hundredth time.

"Yes. Because you don't need it anymore. It's served you well but now it's time to say goodbye to it."

Sammie wasn't good at saying farewell but tried to see it as a positive indication that Jane believed she was now strong enough to move on.

"What we ideally want is for you to move on from the feelings you've nurtured on your secret island and transfer them into your actual reality as seamlessly and carefully as possible. That way you will start to see the beauty in your everyday life once again."

Abandonment issues after her father had left her as a young girl meant that anxious feelings about leaving the island would be unavoidable for Sammie. Several messy break-ups with men hadn't helped either compounding the problematic issues associated with male figures and separation throughout her life.

"Come on. Let's mark a date for when you sail away," Jane said, grabbing a calendar off the wall of her office and popping the top off a marker pen in preparation for Sammie to confirm her chosen day of departure.

"Um. Okay. How about 24th July?"

"That's a Monday. You okay with that?"

Nodding unconvincingly, Sammie hesitant watched as Jane wrote it down with her thick black pen on the calendar.

"Well done!"

The 24th had finally rolled around and Sammie finally prepared herself to say goodbye to her island at precisely 11 a.m in the morning as she laid down on her ocean-blue couch and closed her eyes.

As she breathed in the sweet-scented air of the fantasy place through her nose and out through her mouth, she thought how similar it was to the movement of the waves breaking gently against the sandy shore.

"Perhaps I am the island anyway," she said tearfully under her breath as she stepped closer to a small sailing boat that lay in wait for her departure.

Pushing the vessel slowly out into the shallows, Sammie eventually stepped inside it and paddled her way further out to sea adamant she wouldn't look back for fear of how sad it would be for her. Eventually though, with the wind in her sails, Sammie slowly began to turn back to face the island watching it disappear ever further from view until it became smaller and smaller on the horizon.

But just before it disappeared altogether, Sammie grabbed a pair of binoculars from her under-seat storage bag to see just a bit more of the ever-vanishing island she so adored.

It was then she caught sight of a distant figure waving back at her. Sammie couldn't quite work out if it was saying goodbye or in a state of distress but felt she was far too out at sea now to turn the boat around.

Then the wind chime ringtone of her phone alarm started to stir her from her light sleep.

Waking up in a panic, Sammie suddenly sat bolt upright and screamed into the cold light of the room - "Dad?!!!"