#confusing perspective

On the station I would always complain about the tang in the air, the flickering lights, the reverberations that went from my feet to my head, the damn control unit that either burned or froze out. However, when I finally got back to my beloved farm, the steady earth felt strange, I choked on the air, the sun hurt my eyes, it took me five years to find my Earth legs again.

I watched on the news when all the old war stations were destroyed and I looked for the one that had held me captive for seven years but they didn't show it. They wouldn't have done it justice anyway, not the clang of the space dock, or the cries of the wounded, not the stench of alcohol and burned food and flesh. Not the doctors and the nurses and the engineers and the techs and the rest of us working tirelessly, against all insanity. Our fearless leader looking at us through shadowed eyes as she thinks of her children back home, the jokes, the nightmares, the back biting, the love, the hatred, the infighting, the crying, the homesickness, the desperation, the pain. Mary-Jane sobbing her eyes out until she was finally sent to Trinity station, our vigilant head surgeon drowning himself in booze and cards, our chief engineer ready to hang herself at the sight of the next broken engine.

Then me, hacked into the computer with an implant I didn't want, getting married through a video link and watching my 'son' grow up into a stranger, unable to attend mom's funeral, dying a little each day as my childhood was robbed away. I know that I am just one of many whose lives were ruined and some would say that I was lucky that I was alive, but some days I don't feel lucky.

Even after all these years, I still don’t know much about the people we were fighting. I didn’t want to know. I rationally know that they were fighting for their homes, their culture, their families. Their land and culture will never be the same again. I know that they lost more than we ever could.

That was what I was here to say, not to listen to them prattle on about the necessity and honour of it all. I was here to present the cost; my childhood, a doctor's sanity, flyer's dreams, a warrior's life, an engineer's sight, a child's mother, a people ruined, so many things that was why I was here on this flying monstrosity, listening to some flyer, who was too young to remember the galaxy war, babble on.

I have this thing about my hair. I had to keep it short for most of my life. Long hair gets in the way when you try to plug into the computer. Long hair itched and tangled and got in the way. It wasn't practical for an implant, for someone who scurried through tangled wreaks and ran through forests. Someone who leaned over consoles and couldn't afford the second it took to brush his hair away. The longest I let it get was when I was on the floating piece of junk known as 40779 medical station or Hades, depending on who was speaking. That was when I could let it go down to just below my jaw. At its shortest, I was practically bald. I mostly cut it myself. I didn't mind, never really had the time or patience to be a girl and think about my hair. I was a child running through the motions of being a solider, not really much time for hair.

The moment I was free, however, I tried hair growing products. I yelled when people even thought of cutting my hair. I didn't want to be that person. I wanted to be pretty, to be human again. Short hair was for running across a strange planet or sitting on a space station, not for home. Not for working on my farm and dancing with my wife. No, I needed long hair. I needed to be a wife, a mother, a sister, a daughter. Not a solider, not an implant, not a tech, not a medic, not a stranger. I got it down to my waist and it tangled, got in the way and I didn't know what to do with it, but I needed it. Short hair was for boys, short hair made you stand out, short hair showed people where you had been, short hair showed the implant. Short hair wasn't practical for a wife and mother and daughter.

The problem was that I stood out with long hair or short hair. Long hair, and makeup and dresses couldn't hide what had happened to me, what I was. Just because I looked the part didn't stop my nightmares. Didn't stop the agoraphobia, the hallucinations, the memories that no one understood. I didn't smile at the jokes that they said. I didn't want to go to dances anymore. I screamed every time something dropped and I couldn't stand crowds. I had grown to be a different person while I was away and they had grown too. I wanted to be the person they wanted, who laughed and danced, and rode horses and played in fields and was everything to her child and family, but I couldn't. I wasn't a daughter, I wasn't a wife, I wasn't a mother; I was a stranger. Two days after my wife left me and took her son, I chopped off all my hair. If long hair can't make me that person again, then why should I try?

My stomach lurched to my throat as the shuttle docked on the station and the young flyer apologized for the rough landing. I had to inwardly laugh. Compared to some of the aerodynamics Redbird and Starlight subjected me to over the years, it was a walk in the park in fact, quite smooth. However, I said nothing. The two of us had developed a nice uncomfortable silence halfway through the ride and I had no desire to ruin it now. It wasn't that I hated or even disliked young people, it's just that I didn't really understand them and they didn't understand me (Especially my 'son' and daughter. To them I was a blank wall that could never be understood and shouldn't even be tried). Besides, it wasn't the cycle that had disturbed my stomach, it was the memories that insisted on invading my consciousness.

I had finally stopped seeing war everywhere. The sight of red hair didn't make me think of a young woman with big dreams and a big attitude stripped of everything she dreamed of, just one of so many broken young people. The smell of rust and smoke didn't transport me to the death trap of a station and a situation born in Hades. I could hear the rumble of thunder without breaking into a cold sweat of terror and feel the rush of adrenaline surge through me. I no longer expected the floor under my feet to roll or the air to push in around me and I don't flinch from the touch of metal. I had finally left all that behind on a station that no longer existed and a world that we had no business pursing. I was free.

I wish that it had happened years ago before I was saddled with the mantle of crazy because I flinched at things that weren’t there and blinked and moaned in the dim sunlight. Before, my wife left me because she didn't recognize the woman she was with, because it was so much easier to pretend that everything was OK when a solar system and a video link stood between us. I wonder sometimes if she regretted marrying me because I know she didn't regret the divorce. She found someone better, someone who didn't still reside in space, who hadn't left her sanity on a planet so similar to ours yet so different. She found someone who could be there for her son, who didn't stare at him, wondering why a little boy wasn't staring back. It was for the best, I suppose. My second marriage lasted less time and my daughter loves me because she has to. Which is another thing that I regret. The second marriage confirmed something for me though. The reason that my first marriage had lasted so long was because we were able to turn off the video link. But I had sorted those issues now; I was ready to be a mother despite the fact that it was too late. Then this happened.

All that work to forget and all it took was one message to bring it all back. All it took was one message to remind me that it would never be over. They could demolish all of the medical and war stations. They could declare peace treaties and start attempting interspecies healing. They could even remove all the implants that made my life hell, that stole my brother and twelve years of my life. They could do all these things, and they did, but they couldn't fix what had been done to me. They couldn't remove the memories of the horror, of the pain, of friends slowly losing their minds as they patched people and machines up as if they were interchangeable. They couldn't make it so one young flyer could stand up and walk, could recover her dreams of being the first flyer to search the Jemison asteroid belt, the one to give humanity the resources it needed. Peace treaties could never give a doctor back his sanity, his youth, his hope, his home. Demolishing the stations would never give a mechanic back her faith, her love, her determination. Words would never return the lives lost, not simply the dead but the living. The dead remained dead, my friends remained broken, my brother would remain in a coma and I would remain alone. Yet here they were offering their apologies and a celebration.