Evening Sky [JoongDunk]

[19] Until the light permeates your heart, let's go with me

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Hi everyone, i just want to give you some warnings before reading this chapter. This chapter contains some heavy contents like a suicidal act, depression, panic, anxiety in a detailed manner, it can be triggering for some people. Please beware yourself before reading.

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Is it true that fear is only happening in your mind?

His psychiatrist often said to him that Joong Archen must know everything that is turmoil inside of him is just only a product from his brain. If he takes his medicine, goes into therapy diligently, and lives a healthy lifestyle, he said that one day all the sickness in his brain might be cured.

One day.

In a very desperate moment, he wants to believe his psychiatrist so much. He wants to have faith in his words, faith that makes him able to tell himself that yes, one day... I will live like a normal person.

He wants to live without consuming so many pills that work on his nerve system to make him able to face his own father without a trembling hand. He wants to live without the need of taking a sleeping pill, he wants to be like other normal people where they can sleep whenever they feel like it. He wants to face people without thinking, "let's go, put your mask on and smile. Don't make any mistakes."

Joong Archen, all he ever wants... he just wants to breathe.

He wants to breathe easily, he wants to breathe with freedom to show who he really is. He wants to be just an ordinary person who has parents who love and support him with a sincere heart, a sister and family who adore him and tell him that we are family we must hold each other's hand tightly, a daughter who looks up to him and rely on him and... a lover who can make him feel at rest at the end of tiring day.

He wants what an ordinary person has in their life.

But for him, it is an extraordinary thing.

His issue with his brain (the doctors said something is wrong with his brain right? To have this much sickness inside of him, it's brain they said) where he sometimes loses control over his own feelings, hearing voices, and has a tendency to hurt himself whenever his inner turmoil flares up, blocking himself from having what he wants.

He definitely can't face his father like normal people do because of his anxiety and excessive fear. His mother sets a gap with him and it's hard for Joong to talk to her from heart to heart because he couldn't open up himself to his own mother because of the boundaries they have. The only person he ever showed who he truly is and told what it was inside the damaged person like Joong Archen, he hurted him so badly until it's beyond repair. And he did that because he wanted to seek comfort from the voices inside his mind, he wanted some escape from it.

Then his daughter, the person who must first be taken away from him whenever Joong's tendency of hurting himself and his hallucination was back at full force. He can't protect her, because someone that can hurt her... is himself.

One day, he will get better.

But that one day turns into days, weeks, months, and years until it's unrecognizable when it can happen to his life. Until the point when Joong thinks... it won't happen.

Thirty years of his life, the only time he ever lived his life was when he let his heart to be in love with a handsome yet beautiful man named Dunk Natachai, in a very short time in his first year of becoming a high school student.

The rest of his life, Joong is just hanging on. Surviving.

And today, especially today, is just another day of his survival mode.