Then to Now.

I redrew the very first picture of Embera and Koe and ended up on a road of discovery.

I’ve been contemplating Eldair a lot lately. I’ve been spending time writing and developing the story. It’s been a lot of fun exploring where this story might take us and where these characters are going. In the last couple of months, I’ve redeveloped the end of the story. The end that I had planned over 15 years ago has completely changed for the better.

As I’ve been rebuilding this story, I was struck by how deeply I feel for these characters—particularly Koe and Embera. As I write and imagine their struggles, pains, and growth, I can’t help but feel like they are real people, and I’m just writing down their story for you all to read. I felt it was odd, because I don’t feel this way quite so strongly towards other characters. I know that this is just a story, so why do they feel so real?

Then I realized that Koe and Embera have been in my life longer than they haven’t.

I started writing Children of Eldair when I was in Jr. High. Looking back, I can see that this story was birthed from my blooming depression as a way to cope with the darkness I was feeling inside. My own emotions weren’t safe. They had to be hidden. So, I hid them in this book, bleeding out into my characters written onto those pages.

As the years passed by, my passion for Eldair came and went. I worked on other stories, developed other characters, but I always, inevitably, came back to this world that stole me away from my own. Koe and Embera grew with me through the depths of despair and illness. I couldn’t feel the right way, so they did it for me.

At some point, I put a literal demon in Embera’s back. It pushed, pulled, and strangled her emotions as she fought and fought. Which emotions were real? Which were fake? Manipulated, twisting, corrupted feelings pushing her into some emotional tormented hell. I thought it fit well with the story. It made sense. Of course there would be a demon in Embera’s back, how could there not be?

I wanted to represent what anxiety felt like. I didn’t realize it was an expression of what I felt like. There was a demon in my back, and I didn’t even know it.

And Koe, the one who wanted to help, could only watch and weep. The girl he loves dearly falling deeper and deeper into darkness. How can he save her? All he can do is pray and hope God is listening. Hope that there’s some plan and point to this madness. This suffering. I watched myself get sicker and sicker, year after year. I could do nothing. I could only watch and weep. And pray and hope that God was listening.

He was.

As I read through scripts and outlines I’ve written over the last two decades, I can see the attempt to write hope and healing into the story—I had to hope that these characters would find that light. But it never felt right. It felt artificial. Maybe it’s because I didn’t know what light looked like. What true healing and happiness looked like. I just had little glimpses and guesses of what it might look like.

But over the last two years I’ve not only been able to face the demon in my back, but slowly chip it away, shedding off the darkness little by little. I finally find myself no longer in constant torment but standing out in the light I always hoped was there, but could not see or feel. In my writing through the years, I tried to predict what this light might look like. I got it all wrong.

It’s far more beautiful, wonderful, complex, and simple than I could have ever imagined. Christ is truly at the center of it.

I often lamented that it was taking me so long to draw this story. I wanted to hurry and tell it to you. But how could I have told it without going through this journey myself? How could Embera and Koe, the two who have mirrored my struggle and pain, find that light if I hadn’t? It would have come off as fake, because it would have been the imaginings of a sick girl who had to try and pretend because the alternative was simply to give up and die.

Koe. Embera. Things will get worse. I’m sorry. But it is not without purpose and meaning. We will rise from the depths stronger, better, happier, and brighter. There are some things that only experience can teach us. And when we look back, we’ll see where we were and what we have become because of it. And we, and all the people we have met along the way, will be lifted up because of that experience.

I still have a ways to go in my own personal health journey. I still occasionally find myself in that darkness, but I find myself in the light more often than not. And the thing is, I know I’m only just at the sunrise. There is so much more good, hope, healing, and light to experience in this life and I’m just at the start of it. By the time I reach the end of Eldair, how much more will change? How much better will I become?

I found the first picture I drew of Embera and Koe together. I was 13. Just a child at the start of my long journey through the valley of shadow of death. I decided it was time to redraw it to show where I have been, and how far I have come. Just as good art takes years of practice and experience, so does life. Imagine how much better I’ll be in another 20 years!

Dream, you two. And know that the darkness is just temporary. Light and happiness is not just some far-off dream—but completely real. You’ll find it one day.

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If you managed to read this far, thank you. Your support in my art journey has also helped support me in my life journey. This post was meant to just be a quick post “Look at a thing I made” and run. But I ended up finding myself contemplating the journey I’ve taken between the then and now. If you are in the darkness, hold on and have faith. Suffering doesn’t have to simply be for the sake of suffering.

May you find your path to the light. May you grow and cultivate something good from that suffering. Even in dark places, good things can grow, for we have not been buried. We’ve been planted.

If you’re curious about what specific steps I took to overcome my mental and physical illness, please feel free to reach out to me privately.