Chapter Text
It started slow, the descent of Charlie’s mind. So slow no one noticed until it was too late. His head was never screwed on quite right, that’s what everyone said anyways. Poor little Charlie, always acting crazy. A little dramatic. Always crying. Always talking about demons.
“If you had demons what color would they be?” He’d ask and people would wrinkle their noses, shake their heads and tell him to shut up. Stop talking. You’re acting crazy.
Ben was a helper until he wasn’t. He used to hold Charlie and promise that he was fine. “You’re not crazy baby, the world just needs to open their eyes. They don’t know anything.” And Charlie would shake his head, hiding his face in Ben’s shirt telling him that maybe they were right. “Maybe there’s something wrong,” but his answer was always a resounding “no,”
But things change, as they always do, and his answers stopped being sweet. He stopped being nice. When Charlie would ask things about the future and “Ben, if you had a heaven what would it be?” His answers weren’t “You’re my heaven, baby.” but they turned sour, spiteful. “You asked me that already. I told you. There’s no such thing in heaven. Shut up,”
“They say Van Gogh used to eat yellow paint. Did you know? They say it made him happy. Do you think that’s true? Do you think it made him happy?”
“Van Gogh died Charlie,”
“But do you think he was happy?”
Charlie was twenty-six but he held memories of his senior year close to his heart. He remembered meeting Ben and falling for him so hard and fast that he nearly got whiplash. Ben was sweet and so so nice, a big difference from the people Charlie was usually surrounded with. He hammered his way into his heart, taking shelter and creating his home there.
Charlie was determined to never let him leave. They met and they loved and it was beautiful, so so beautiful. They were happy, in a twisted sort of way. Ben liked that Charlie loved him, liked that he would allow him to get away with anything. Charlie loved him because it felt like it was forever.
Forever ended, like everything else. They were married now, had been for years. But they didn’t talk anymore. Not like they used to. They didn’t touch or fuck like they used to. Everything was different and Charlie wasn’t sure why. “It’s because you’re out of your fucking mind,” he’d say and Charlie would flinch because whatever happened to the days when he’d promise him he wasn’t?
What happened to those days when he’d hold Charlie and promise him he was something greater, something beautiful. He saw the world differently. That’s all. “They just need to open their eyes baby, that’s all.”
“If you had demons what color would they be?”
“Probably purple,”
“Mine would be yellow. Like Van Gogh’s. They say he ate yellow paint because it made him happy.”
The world was never just black and white, like others would try to make it seem. The world is colorful, flashes of light and thunder making things bright for just a moment before everything is dark once more.
Life is the center of everything, everything comes to an end, doesn’t it?
“Have you been taking your medication, Charlie?”
“I hate it. It makes my head feel funny,”
“They make you better.”
“No. They make me feel crazy,”
“You don’t need medication to be crazy,”
And so the story continues, the story of a sad boy who took sad things and tried to make them beautiful. He tried to share his words, sent his books off to publishers but no one listened. No one even took a second glance because no one wants to read stories written by the crazy. But aren’t all artists a little mad? He thought so. Like Van Gogh. They say he used to eat yellow paint. But did he?
Or was that just a rumor people made up?
The story of a thousand and one sad things stacked up to create the life of one boy whose mind was never quite alright. He took beautiful things and he made them sad. No one wants to read about the beautiful boy who wanted to be sad for the sake of his art. “I’d be a shitty fucking writer if I wasn’t sad. I know I would be,” that’s what he would say. And maybe that’s true. Maybe his writing career would crumble.
Maybe it would.
But then at least he wouldn’t cut so deep. He wouldn’t have to sheepishly pull down his sleeve and make up reason upon reason that do nothing because no one believes them anyways. He wouldn’t have to do anything but let his sadness be just that, just sadness. He wouldn’t have to fight for a way to find beauty through his pain.
He was hurting. Of course he was. How could he not? Life was pain, or at least that was all he had ever known.
All the therapists in the world didn’t change that. It was all he knew, it was the only thing he allowed himself to love.
He lost his mind at a young age. No one knows for sure when because no one paid attention until it was gone.
And he wrote. He wrote his heart out, letting out everything in his head on pieces of paper. He was addicted to it, the feeling of the ink on paper. The way everything slowed long enough to let his racing heart feel something but black.
Because that’s what his heart was. Black with red splotches, bloody and painful. He swears his writing mimics that. His writing was what made him feel okay, for just a moment. A single solitary moment, encased forever on the sheet of paper.
So maybe he’d slit his wrists and take the tissues he used to stop the bleeding and maybe he’d drip the blood on the pages and call it art. He was insane, completely mad. But he called that art too, say it was fate. “All the best artists are mad. They are. Like Van Gogh. He ate yellow paint, you know? They say it made him happy.”
No one could get through to him. No one could figure out if it was because he was losing his mind or if he had already lost it.
The descent of his mind, though slow, had come as a surprise. He was married, happy. And then one day he wasn’t. He was depressed, clinically so. Anxiety had become a permanent fixture in his mind, taking up space. He promised to pay rent. He promised to leave soon and yet he was kicked back, his feet resting on the coffee table in her mind and he’d made himself comfortable. And he didn’t plan on leaving, that dirty liar.
Depression, the beautiful mistress, was there as well. She talked loud, made herself known. She was married to Charlie’s madness but she was having an affair with his anxiety. They met in the early hours of the morning to talk and make love to the idea of Charlie’s pain. It was a nasty sort of love.
Charlie wished them well.
He hoped they would find a way to be together without making him want to jump off the nearest bridge to end the suffering their love for each other brought to him.