Cycles [ChanBaek]

[Cycles]

So as many of you know, I'm mentally ill, and many of the experiences I write about, or at least the train of thought I make my characters have is very similar to mine.

I have OCD, if anyone is wondering, a very uncomprehended mental illness.

So anyway, as I was saying, I portray my train of thought in my stories and I use them as a coping mechanism, too. It was like this that this story came to be.

I won't get into too much detail cuz I don't find it necessary, but the thing is that the day I wrote this a doctor said a couple of things to me (I was being scolded) that seriously triggered me. The thing is that, usually, when I'm said hurtful things, they don't hit me immediately. I usually just accept them and keep going like nothing happened until my mind finds the perfect moment to attack. It usually takes a couple of minutes and, because of the obsessive nature of my thought process, the thought doesn't leave my mind. It gets stuck, so to say, and while it gets stuck, it starts becoming bigger, adding bad details to it until my thoughts turn extremely dark and... We'll leave it there.

As a way to vent my frustrations, my anxiety, my anger and my pain, I decided I wanted to write something. I didn't have time to update one of my tweetfics, though, since that means opening Drive, starting to type and then editing it a little and then copying and pasting. That's why I started this, I wanted to write something faster that wasn't a hassle.

Anyway, it worked, I felt slightly better and ended up writing this... That turned out more angsty than I thought.

In the end, I decided to teach a couple of lessons and even use elements of what I'll be including in one particular story of mine (maybe someone who's reading it can guess which one) here, but a little less elaborate.

In this story I included many things, like toxic and abusive relationships, which I haven't experienced myself, but have seen people close to me go through to different extents. I also include mental illness, though i don't explicitly say it is that, and other things that I threw here and there.

As a person with mental illness myself, I explained a little about what my own journey with living with this conditions has been like to me. You see, I believe life is full of cycles, some smaller, some bigger, but all cycles. Life is the bigger cycle and inside it, there are smaller cycles. Many interlap, many have smaller cycles insides, etc. Each day is a cycle, each week, each month, etc... and every cycle can end in a bad or a good note depending on how you see it.

For example, to me, high school was a cycle. I didn't end it on a bad note academically, though it could've been better in that aspect, but I didn't feel like it ended well either in other aspects. In contrast, the first quarter of last year ended in a good note. Life, the bigger cycle, starts when we're born (or even before, idk) and ends with death. To many, this is a sad ending, a tragedy, while to me it isn't, it's just the end of a cycle, my cycle. There are exceptions, of course.

In this story, Chanyeol and Baekhyun go through many cycles in life, some more tragic than others. And this, to me, is how life goes. I've learned to tell myself that, even if a cycle ended badly, the next one doesn't have to be like that, or the one that follows.

It was the same for Baekhyun. His toxic relationship was a cycle, a horrible one with a sad ending, and the one that followed was sad too, and the one that followed, but eventually, those cycles started getting better, right? He fought to get better, he fought to become better himself.

With this, what I want to say is that life is full of sad, happy and open endings, and you know what? That's okay. I, though, don't like to focus on the sad ones, or at least not on the sad ending of the cycle I'm writing about.

It goes without saying that, even with a happy ending, it doesn't mean that a future cycle won't have a sad one.

I considered not writing the epilogue (cycle 4) because, to me, Baekhyun and Chanyeol meeting again was the ending for a cycle, a cycle of more than 23 years, and it didn't end badly, it ended well, it ended with hope, and a new one started on that positive note.

In the end I caved because I love happy endings myself and figured it would be nice to show another cycle of their lives, a happy one.

I'm ranting a lot lol sorry.

I'll stop ranting already, but not without saying that, no matter what happens, you're strong enough, you're amazing, and you can do anything you put your mind to.