Afterimage

by yuerina

Summary:

After. The story of an artist’s life after a suicide attempt told in a series of befores, leading up to the moment of disaster. She goes on medication and starts therapy, flattening the extremity of her “old” emotions, including the intensity and creativity which she feels defined her previous self.
This story encapsulates an introspective battle between deciding if she prefers being stable and diminished, or brilliant and unwell — and whether “who she really is” was ever a fair question to begin with.

Notes:

I dedicate this fic to everyone out there who has decided you must suffer to be beautiful — and to prove them wrong.
This is my first story ever if you don’t count the writing tasks at school, so there may be some parts which are cliche or cringe or poorly written or whatever, I apologise in advance hahah

WORK IN PROGRESS

Chapter 1: Prologue

"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche

 

Geez, how many people do you think that line’s killed? You’d be under the impression a dead German dude wouldn’t still be talking teenagers into mental illness after all these years, and yet, take a look at me.
Okay, yeah, I know that quote is a myth. I’ve read the millions of essays Pat, my therapist sent. I could even argue you out of believing it in approximately four sentences, if you asked nicely.
I just haven’t managed to argue myself out of it yet.

On a logical standpoint, the archetype of the “tortured artist” ignores the fundamental flow of cause and effect, along with all the other forms of passion that could be harnessed into a piece. But, it’s already sunk its claws into the minds of society, long ago, manifesting as an unconsciously unchallenged dogma.
Tell me, why is it that romcoms or bubblegum pop songs read as shallow, whilst gothic films or the works of a 'crazed' artist are viewed as intellectualism?
That’s a rhetorical question, by the way. You already know the answer, and I already know which side I chose, back when choosing felt like the whole point of even living.
I needed to shine tragically for the whole world to see, so viscerally, it was as if there was no other way possible for my being to be justified if I didn’t. Otherwise my suffering would have held no meaning, and it would have just been that.
Agonisingly futile suffering.

I want to say I don’t believe it anymore. That would make a far better story. The girl who used to think you had to be ruined to be extraordinary - now cured, and hence lives happily ever after, the end.
If only it was that easy.
Because that’s not quite true, and I’m not going to lie to you this early.
Here’s what is true: I am, by every clinical measure, "better" than I was a year ago.
I can finally sleep. I eat at normal hours. My hands don’t shake when I hold my brush.
You know, the thing used to feel like buzzing electricity - its current always ready to create something new, something exciting. Now just feels like holding a normal paint brush.
Somewhere, underneath all that self-improvement, is a small, stubborn voice that keeps doing the math.
Maybe that’s just the way the brush always was. A tool.
Only, its wielder lost her spark.

 

So this isn’t the part where I tell you I was wrong.
This is just the part where I tell you how it started.
The summer I was supposed to be fine, painting quieter paintings, in a suburb that had already decided who I used to be, and wasn’t especially interested in who I am now