The first day, you sat in your guest house. Surrounded by your plaques, awards, framed albums with billions of streams marked, instruments, recording tech – everything that accumulated over the past seven or so years to represent your accomplishments.
You were nineteen when you signed your life away for what you could only dream of.
Your mother had gone through a messy divorce, leaving her with nothing, and you stuck by her – cut your dad off for the better part of five years. You were already branded with the last name when you entered university and while it had made Tony the king of the campus when he attended, it made you a pariah. You always wondered why – sure, he was a bit more charismatic where you were quiet, but you were always a people person and loved to party and make new friends. You didn't let the voices stop you from performing with your roommate and best friend, Atlas, and they were the first person you thought of when Johnny came to you with an offer of a lifetime.
The money and attention came in buckets, you bought a house in LA after you got a townhouse in New York because while you were attached to your city, you'd been spending more and more time in California for work, so it only seemed logical. Plus, it's not like you couldn't afford it.
And over the years, you realized what you actually wanted couldn't be found in the back of some high-end club or at the height of the grandest stage or in a house on the hills. It wasn't in the compliments or insults, the slut shaming or the worshipping. And it definitely wasn't at the end of a bottle. You've checked. More than thrice.
So, you found an old castle in Italy and took three years to renovate and add to it in ways that would preserve and build off its classic foundation, essentially restoring and expanding it. Then, you recently expanded even further property wise because at first, you didn't want to isolate from the town this estate was outside of, but then you decided you wanted to preserve the wilderness and surrounding forests so that no one built on it. You had the walls, the space, the area – you put in thousands of dollars into the furnishings to make it homey, but not cluttered, classic but not old and stuffy. Someplace you could host some party for important people, but at the same time, you could picture dogs and maybe a kid or two running around, getting the place messy. You wanted it loud and wild and full of laughter and passion and just. You wanted a holiday with a tree and presents and a fireplace and music playing softly and movies and popcorn and.
"It's been three months since you left for Italy, don't you think you should come back?"
You rolled your eyes, scratching the side of your head with a groan, "No. Why?"
"You were always so dramatic."
"Kettle black." You mumbled and he smirked.
"Very funny, but you seriously can't avoid a country because she's in it."
"I think I'm gonna sell my townhouse," You ignored him, barely giving effort into holding up your phone as you facetimed your brother, "It's just sitting there."
He sighed, running a hand down his face in exasperation, "God this is depressing. You're not selling the house. You don't need the money and it's only going to stir things up again."
You had won the court case – millions of dollars that had been stolen over the years from Johnny, some he didn't have, and now he's forced to live in Ohio with his wife's parents while he tries to salvage any form of life for himself – you gave your label one last album before that, already released now. It was easy to write in isolation after a few weeks of going crazy. You wrote the entire thing in four days, flew in Atlas and Wanda, along with a few trusted, contracted producers, and threw the thing together in less than a week after that. You didn't want to sit on this one, do promo, or even announce a drop date. You released the album, went on one radio show that you were assured wouldn't ask anything outside of your music, announced that you were going independent, and then disappeared again. You couldn't believe how much the fans resonated with it – it was full of heartache, rushing through life, missing out on things, utter loneliness, and wanting something you can't have. And it wasn't uplifting or inspiring. It was dark and gritty, and you put everything you were feeling into it. It wasn't about how to deal with any of it either, it was the pent-up anger and torture and having the urge to scream into the emptiness, not wanting an echo or a reason. Just living in the dark. Unsurprisingly, you wrote every lyric yourself, and of course, the label had comments, removed a few songs off it entirely, but eventually gave it a pass.
Three months is a long time to live like the world ended and while you had the luxury of doing it in a massive mansion with a staff on call, you had a gut feeling that it wouldn't matter that much where you were. But then again, you couldn't speak from the other side.
You spent your days drinking energy drinks, taking edibles, scrolling through social media like a ghost, strumming on your guitar, and writing lyrics. You barely ate, rarely slept, and never felt warm inside or out.
Most days were spent dressed in loose shorts, a random bra, and your robe brushing the floor as you padded around the place barefoot. Sometimes you'd call a few people just to check in like Atlas or your family, but for the most part, you rarely even saw your workers.
Maybe you were dramatic.
Or maybe you let the best thing to come into your life, which is saying something, slip.
You laughed at yourself with that, god, you really were pathetic.
You played music throughout the house, dancing through the halls and laughing loudly at some of the foolish moves you made, tripping on your own feet once in a while, and you felt an odd freeing feeling in the moment. It was like as long as you kept moving and tricking yourself into a content, uplifting mood, the fact that you had possibly lost the love of your life because of choices you made when you were a kid and ones you had to recently would slip your mind.
In a spur of the moment decision, you decided to invite your stylist and nutritionist over because one, you wanted to cancel a few things that you had coming up and two, you slowly wanted to crawl back into a form of normalcy.
They were both thrilled you had dropped a couple of stones, bringing you to 'model weight' and cooed over this revelation, a flurry of plans racing between them as they talked over each other ecstatically.
You fired them both on the spot.
You could crawl out of your self-isolating cave another day.
