Ataraxia's notes concept:

Top: Chocolate Bar, Carolina Reaper

Heart: Chocolate Cake (Amandină), Red Hot Chilli, Wasabi, Pollen, Antique Shop, Turmeric, Root Beer

Base: Cocoa Pod, Edamame, Pistachio, Old Book, Halva, Potato

Macerated for at least 4 months.

Extrait de parfum concentration.

Concept presented by Ataraxia for the Vestibule perfume.

- Coming down the stairs, my dad greeted him and asked how it went. They talked for a bit while I sat halfway down the stairway, watching them. I was feeling a bit tired, having woken up earlier that day. As he was about to leave our house, my dad started chuckling and told him with a mocking smile on his face: "You know he also wants to paint now", as if the only thing they had in common was the fact that they were observing a failure. Me. This wingless bird, unable to stop jumping off the tree only to smash into the mud below. Too puny to tell it to stop trying, they just watched and smiled. It was amusing to my father.

- What did you do?

- Ugh...I wanted to rip my flesh off. It was horrible, and I was so enraged. It didn't help that my teacher was taken aback by what he said. It confirmed how screwed up it was. I didn't say anything. I know it might not seem like a big deal on its own, but this was how I lived my whole childhood, not feeling enough, being laughed at, scolded, and blamed for things I couldn't even understand. Maybe if I had known what I was doing wrong, it wouldn't have been this bad. The confusion, I think, really messed me up. I was daydreaming about the day I'll die and they will regret everything. They will finally love me.

- From what you told me last week, I get that you made peace with this over the years?

- Hm...sort of. I know it wasn't done with malice.

- Most likely. It can still affect you, though. The cause is rarely the most important thing. Knowing how to move on is. I asked you only because I wanted to understand how you related to the problem back then. Intent is not directly correlated to outcome. And I made a note about the suicidal thoughts, we will return to it in the next session.

- Ok. But like, don't take it too serious, I was just an angsty teenager. So, back to intent and outcome... Well, obviously, it had the exact opposite effect. After that, maybe unconsciously, it felt like for as hard as people kept trying to put me in a box, I wanted more and more to escape it. For every rule they made, I felt I had to break it. For everything they said I couldn't do, I had to try. Not doing that felt like not breathing. Hmm... Sure, it sounds a bit toxic and a bit too dramatic when I say it out loud, but this was the only way I knew how to move forward. Being told what to do and who to be every single day was horrible, it fried my brain. It seems that if I don't completely go against the norm now, I've surrendered, and I am essentially defeated. Dead. I really, really don't want to live my life feeling dead. Not right now. Adult life has to be more than just blue jeans and bragging about being addicted to coffee. I'd rather have you rip my eyes out than make me wear a blue bottle.

Vestibule was designed to smell as whispers of a vampire's lair.