There are two paths before you.

Most people don’t choose. They stand still. In never stepping into their power, they become the tools of those that do.

In choosing between the two paths before you, in embarking beyond this fork in the road, you become a sovereign being. You stop being only effected and start affecting your environment.

The first of these two paths is glittering with gold. It promises to give you everything you can imagine: fame, wealth, success, and a never-ending line of adoration. The price of this path is pretty straight forward: your soul. What? You don’t want it badly enough? Don’t you know that success requires sacrifice?

I have a confession to make: I have walked this path of darkness. Driven by a desire for power and the security it promised to provide, I worked for a man who was anything but trustworthy, but who demanded absolute trust from anyone who had the honor of working with him.

The process of grooming me for this manipulation took him over a year. He attended my publicly hosted meetups and positioned himself as an intelligent, business-savy mentor—someone willing to provide guidance to me along my uncertain path as an ambitious 19-year-old without direction.

After one of my first meetups he attended, he pulled me aside, said that he believed in me, and that he wanted to invest thousands of dollars in helping me start a design business.

After a few more conversations, he dropped off the face of the earth. I didn’t hear from him for six months. When he eventually re-surfaced, he asked me, “Did you learn your lesson?”

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

I am thrilled with the feedback from my last post—a tear-jerker for any who attempts reading it. It’s a story that took me two years to write… not that I was actively writing it the whole time. I desperately wanted to share my story sooner. I wanted to send it to newspapers, accompanied with my own rude political-cartoon style illustrations mocking the mental healthcare system, but I couldn’t do it. I was too angry.

I couldn’t let myself share my story until I let myself empathize with mental healthcare practitioners—the people I called and left countless unanswered voicemails for help—desperate cries drowned in a sea of others. I had to stop wanting to tear them down and instead see things from their perspective: the overwhelm and frustration that comes from needing to solve urgent problems with the wrong set of tools. You do your best to cover gashing wounds with band-aids, but the line of wailing wounded is going out the door.

I couldn’t let myself write about my experiences with family mental illness until I let myself empathize with mass killing shooters. It is a topic that you think I would be at the forefront of discussing—but until then—I could do nothing but look away.

I couldn’t let myself write my story until I let myself feel all of the pain again. My story has encouraged others to write about their experiences, and I am thrilled for this: we need all the perspectives we can get. But I warn you, this is not easy. The following outlines my writing process, along with common pitfalls that experience has taught me to avoid.

This is going to be an uncomfortable read for you. Is there a topic that stirs more discomfort than mental illness?

This is going to be a challenging read for you. Is there a field where our lack of understanding translates into the real premature cost of human life, of loved ones, of children, in violently horrific ways, more so than mental illness?

And finally, if you are brave enough to keep reading, this is going to be an emotionally heart-wrenching read for you. We are plagued by mass shootings to the point of numbness, and yet, they keep happening. Is there a topic that makes us feel more powerless than mental illness?

If you can stomach this read, even if you are the only person in the world who can, then the pain I have sifted through to bring you these blood-stained words will not have been in vain. My body shakes in-between sobs as I try to get this message to you. Just you. I couldn’t write this for everyone. I couldn’t make this easy. Nothing about this is easy.

The most recent shooting took place in Florida, the state I call home, where I grew up. Palm trees and beaches line the memories of my mom needing to go to the hospital yet again in handcuffs, the experiences of which were not discussed afterwards. “What was mommy sick with?” I am 8 years old and confused. My dad teaches me a new word. “Bipolar.”

Though you may learn a new word, that doesn’t mean that you can say it whenever you want, not even when you need to. Some words are like curse words; any relief you get in yelling them loudly is not worth the risk.

F**k!

The Florida sun beats down on the car to accent the embarrassment that has flushed my cheeks in a K-Mart parking lot. My mom used to work here, but not since she quit weeks ago. Inside she made a scene in front of her old coworkers as I stood aside with my brother, Matthew. He’s frustratingly too young to understand, and our matching red hair makes us stand out at a time where I’d give anything for invisibility. A former coworker puts his arm around my mom and asks with genuine concern, “Are you okay?” I want to run away.

Minutes later we are in the car and my mom is calling the police yet again. The wait in between a 911 call and the cops arriving to file yet another report that is not true, but that they pretend to take seriously for my mom’s sake, stresses me out. I can’t take it anymore. The police report captures my loud arguing with my mom through the cellphone and ends poignantly: “Daughter hung up on me.” I was twelve.

My illustration output and rendering skills have exploded these last few months; the above being the most recent piece I did. In this post I retrospectively share my work and resources I’ve been devouring on the quest to becoming a better visual communicator everyday.

For those interested in following the journey, every little sketch at a time, you can find me regularly posting on Instagram: @amandalynnelliott.

I am now also accepting commissions. Everything from simple sketches to elaborate complex scenes full of color. If you’re interested, message me here.

Alligator Ghostland

A big breakthrough I’ve had is embracing color and backgrounds. The above comic pages were heavily inspired by two things:

I went to a psychic a while ago. Simply guided by curiosity, I didn’t have any specific concerns, but I left with a bad taste in my mouth.

She didn’t say anything explicitly bad, but I walked in expecting a discussion and reflection on life, while what I got were some shallow predictions about general improvements to my life that did not impress me.

We have a tendency to view the future as static, fixed, and mostly removed from our control. There’s a tendency to view reality with the cold detachment of a scientific researcher: as if everything can be reduced to the goofy meaningless randomness of colliding atoms that is, again, outside of the control of us mere mortals.

This is such a powerless world-view to have. It makes us wrought with worry and anxiety; as if we are wandering through a thick fog, and anything we stumble upon, be it a million dollars, or a deadly fall off a cliff, would be a total accident.

Luckily, this powerless worldview is entirely optional.