Still With You | JK ff

Chapter 24 - Haunting Memories!

Your fingers trembled as you reached for the wrinkled bed sheet and before you could even touch it, you fell to your knees panting. The half-done canvas that was perched on an easel and covered under the white sheet stood like a literal ghost in your living room, haunting you every second you spent in your apartment – taunting you from afar, reminding you of your inability and watching you crumble. You gasped for breath, crouched on the floor, clutching at your heaving chest, feeling the oncoming nausea blur your vision.

You had never experienced such an intense physical reaction to painting in a mere artist block ever before. It wasn't just that you couldn't paint anymore, it was that you couldn't so much as bring yourself to touch any art supply, or even coerce yourself to look at any of your work, without feeling faint, or even throwing up on a few occasions. It was like a deep-seated physical repulsion, an aggressive revulsion at the mere thought of making art, and it was proving to be very exhausting for your health since the newly established marketing team was sending you at least five emails about your exhibition every day, leaving you reeling from the aftereffects of the unsettling queasiness.

It had begun as hesitation at having to work on your own exhibition, with the stakes so high, Jungkook's pride on the line, and so many eyes set on you with anticipation. But it gradually morphed into a crippling fear crawling under your skin, since the day you ran into Jiah at the Hybe office for the first time. You had only just begun to feel like you had taken a few steps forward in your life, begun to believe that there was hope for you still, a glimmer of light on the horizon that promised you could someday be rid of all the darkness inside you. But just like that, you seemed to have taken several hundred steps backward, ending up right back where you had started, from the very pit of fear and self-loathing.

You couldn't suppress the torturous past with Minho deep inside you, where you had hoped it would stay until the day it was buried along with you nine feet deep into the Earth. Jiah resuscitated it with her breath, the moment she birthed his name on her lips, and before you knew it, it came encroaching into your entire conscience, creeping into your thoughts the entire day and into your dreams the entire night.

On the day of your episode, Jungkook's tenderness had melted your defense, boiling over all your stifled emotions, pent up all the way up to your nose, drowning you from within. And once you had unwittingly spilled your heart out to him through your eyes, you had come back home feeling emptied out, your feet floating on a gust of wind, the tune Jungkook had been humming stuck on your lips, and your spirit soaring high. For the first time in many weeks, your head felt clear of any murmurs, rid of all dread from the tormenting memories, and you had slept like a newborn in the peaceful silence.

You had convinced yourself that night that Jungkook was your cure, that expressing your pain to him could dissipate the murk in your mind, that maybe if you handed him an end to the jumbled ball of yarn that were your thoughts, he would untangle it for you. That he could just hold your weeping face to his chest, stroke your hair and kiss your wounds, and they would heal under his touch, soothed by his breath, leaving no trace behind. But that peace was only short-lived, much like any other happiness you had ever known in the past. When the voices returned, they were no longer muted murmurs in the background, the visions weren't momentary replays of blurry scenes anymore, they were louder and clearer than ever before. They were a cacophony of blood curdling screams and noises, and blinding flashes of hateful faces and harmful actions, demanding attention from you in the forefront of your mind.

It was like allowing yourself to acknowledge your pain had removed a plug from your heart and all the backed-up filth came flooding out of a choked-up pipe. And they were now pouring into your mind like a rapid force of nature, wrathful and untamable. And so, it wasn't surprising that what you called an 'artist block' for the lack of a better word, had gotten worse. Much worse – physically draining and panic invoking. But you still tried, at least once every day, just like this morning, to see if maybe you could bring yourself to at least hold a brush to start with. And when you had no more strength remaining in you, you would just lie before the floating sheet – the bedsheet ghost of your canvas – sprawled on the floor, blinded by replaying visions from the past until you would pass out.