Just don't give up on me

still fighting

*Elodie*

The gallery smelled of paint and wood when I entered it. The first rays of the sun were shining on the sculptures that were in the front.

I loved that smell so much. Especially the one of paint. It had been ages since my apartment had last smelled like this. I had firmly resolved that this was the first step. A small step back to the old me. Back to the Eli who had disappeared in Spa three years ago.

It was enough for a start.

I had finally moved to Monaco. A dream I had cherished for a long time and I had managed to get a job in a beautiful little gallery.

Art had always been my life. Since I was little, I had painted, I had taken photographs, made music, sung, danced. It had always been colorful in my head. I had created fantasy worlds and gone on adventures every day.  The older I had become, the less they had been fantasy worlds, but inspirations that had sometimes taken me to another world for hours. I had sometimes forgotten the time and simply painted until the middle of the night. I had put what was in my head on the canvas and had always had more ideas.

It had felt as if this torrent of ideas would never end.

But then it had ended. In one fell swoop.

My little brother Anthoine had always been my muse. My inspiration. With his death, it was all gone at once. I had no longer touched the brushes because there was nothing left in my head that I wanted to put on a canvas. There was nothing more. With him, a part of me had died on the race track.

Anthoine had been everything to me. He had been more than my little brother. He had been my best friend. My biggest fan. My most important supporter. My toughest critic.

I had always been able to talk to him about everything. And then he had been gone. Just like that.

I would never forget this feeling of absolute emptiness. Maybe also for the reason that it was still there. I felt lost without my brother.

But I knew it was time to move on.

I couldn't let my whole life pass me by. He would never have wanted that. He would have wanted me to move on and fulfill my dreams. But it was hard for me. Infinitely hard.

I was still struggling every day.

But things were moving forward. I started to feel myself again.

By now I had been in Monaco for two weeks and in this job that really filled me up again. It made me happy. The job here really made me happy.

I took my stuff upstairs to the staff room.

My boss was really cool. She gave me a lot of freedom here and had even offered to let me share the studio above the gallery. Maybe I would do that someday. But it was a nice offer.

I liked Aurelia. It had been an instant fit between us. We had had the interview via Zoom and even then we had hit it off. She was such a fun-loving, easy-going person. Only a few years older than me and she loved art at least as much as I did.

When she talked, it felt like the whole room was listening to her. And when she spoke, she spoke with her whole body. She had somehow captivated me right away. I really wanted to work for her. And she had really wanted me to work in her gallery.

She had liked the "color of my aura" so much.

She was a little unusual, but I liked that.

I put my bag in the small staff room and then set about dusting the sculptures. Many of them were not under glass cases because Aurelia wanted you to experience them with your whole body. She wanted you to be able to touch her art, too.