(lucky ones) - fic notes

[alaeaureae.livejournal.com]

I started writing this with one thought in mind: what if Lu Han had bipolar (2)? In that moment, three scenes unfolded simultaneously. 1) The first paragraph. 2) Where Yixing asks him "Do you want to talk about it?" ending with Lu Han turning off the lights. 3) "When I was little," Yixing said, "I was sad. Sometimes."

Everything else...I'd like to say "it just happened", but not quite.

Some background! I "suffer from" bipolar disorder II, so despite starting off in Yixing's POV, I thought that I would write the majority of this from Lu Han's POV and write "from experience". That isn't what happened. At all. Every time I tried to write from Lu Han's POV, I felt lost, and could only manage a line or two before switching back. I didn't know what he would feel. I didn't know what he felt. I didn't know how I'd felt. What started as "from experience" turned into "hunt through old journal entries" and "peruse Wikipedia". For this reason, I sincerely apologise if I "got anything wrong", so to speak. Although, anything in regards to mental health is a little sticky imo, because it's different for every single person.

But it makes sense, now. Because my role, my present role, it's the one that Yixing assumes in the story, isn't it? That of an observer. An observer who can only hope to intervene when things get bad. And the observer can never, ever, ever truly know what it feels like.

"What does it feel like?" she asks.

You glance at your hands. You do that a lot. You glance at her hands. She's crossed her fingers. Uncrosses them. Crosses them again. Slowly. "Like a hole," you say. But this isn't what you remember feeling. Not at all. All you remember are the words. Your own words. You're told they're your own words. "A deep hole."

Why Lu Han? (The actual answer to this is, he's the first one that came to mind.) On one hand, he interests me, but on the other, he doesn't at all. He's nuanced, but at the same time, he's very simple to read. He's cheerful and pretty and popular - he's been a 'punk', a fanboy. And, to be honest, some of the people I know who've had depression for a long, long time are also some of the most cheerful people I know.

I thought that I would feel something when I finished. This was supposed to be deeply personal and cathratic to write. I'm not sure what I accomplished. There was no sense of relief when I finished, no drain of emotion, no numbness, no blankness, no frustration or anger or anything. Maybe it's because I was a little drunk, but I didn't sit down to write when I was drunk. I ended up drunk partway through, but that just meant I was a little slow, I think. All I did was scrape the surface. All I did was pick up words that have been swirling around and plop them on the screen. I think this is something I needed to write, if only because it's the first thing I've managed to write in, well, many months.

By the way, maybe I should say something about bipolar 2 itself. Like, talk to someone! Talk to a professional! If you haven't. But the truth is, take it at your own pace. There's no right or wrong. And, as much as I hate to admit it, there's still too much stigma. But: talk to your friends. They're there for you. They're your friends for a reason. Trust them. Sometimes, you'll be surprised.