From Emo to Smile and the Llamas in Between

dA was the first thing to make me truly happy in a long long time. That's the conclusion to my story though. The beginning was 1998.

In early 1998, my cat, the family cat, was diagnosed with feline leukemia. We did surgery after surgery, but nothing helped. About 8 months after she was initially diagnosed, my mother was diagnosed with melanoma (skin cancer) and cervical cancer. It didn't take long for my parents to realize that no matter how it traumatized us kids, we just couldn't keep our cat alive any longer. She was put to sleep and buried in the backyard. What I understood: Cancer kills you, Mom's going to die. She didn't, and she's still alive and can't free today, but that realization, that understanding about death, stays with me. I was 8.

That winter, not long after Christmas, my mom received a phone call from her mother. My grandfather had died. I didn't know him well, but with the recent death of our cat, and my understanding growing stronger, it hurt me still.

The next year, my school principal was diagnosed with cancer. To this day, I can't remember what kind it was. She declined rather quickly and spent some time in one of the nursing homes that my mom worked at. I never saw her. The following year, when I was in grade 5, she passed away. The school was informed, grief counselors were hired, at least temporarily, and anyone still having issues after the first week, went to the school counselor. I still had issues.

I spent three weeks with only a couple hours of actual class time a week, most of the time being spent in the counselor's office. My parents were called and I was put into therapy. It didn't last long, only a couple months. In the end, I saw that it wasn't worth it, the doctor didn't help much and it was just better going around with a smile, pretending everything was okay and moving on with my life, pleasing everyone else.

This became my coping method.

The following September, if you can follow the dates, was the fateful September 11, 2001. I was 11. We were living in the States at the time, and, as most of you will know, the event was covered in schools for the next week or so. There were a lot of things going through my head at this time, mostly behind my smiling, innocent face. One of the things that really brought me down, that I didn't tell anyone until about a year ago, was that I truly feared for my father's and my brother's lives. I honestly don't know if I've told them that to this day. My dad is in the military and my brother was, at the time, two years from graduating and going to military college. In my mind, I was certain, at the time of the attacks, that we (Canada and the US) were going to war. I was also certain that my brother and father were going to go fight and die in this war. Inside, I cried a little more.

That February, there was yet another blow to my psyche. One of my classmates and girl scout friends passed away after two days of intense pain. It wasn't until after she had died that the doctors figured out she had spinal meningitis. Her funeral was the first I ever attended.

For years after that I kept everything inside, it leaked out from time to time in words and drawings. Things that scare me today to go back and look at, violent, brutal, horrific things that I can't imagine having thought of. Outside, though, I showed a smiling face.

Some teachers expressed concern to my parents about a lack of friends, and a lack of interest in hanging with peers. I didn't mind. That was who I was.

I met the best friends of my life when I was in grade 10. I honestly don't think they truly understand what I mean when I say that. They are all my age, and they accepted me for who I was, though I did try to change to make them like me more. It was them who introduced me to deviantART.

I joined deviantART in December of 2006 and changed accounts in February 2007. Not long after that, I found skifi, who, at the time, was the Gallery Moderator for the Anthro gallery. I fell in love with anthro. When cooley became a Gallery Moderator for the same gallery, I watched her too. She created #IamAnthro. About two weeks after it was created, I found dAmn.

It was through dAmn and the social network of support that is deviantART that I realized how truly depressed I had been and how much I needed to change.

In November 2008 I was truly happy for the first time in 10 years, thanks to deviantART.

I started smiling because I wanted to, not because the people around me wanted me to. I started finding out what I really liked, not what I liked because other people wanted me to like. I started figuring out who I was, who I am.

It's this long life changing process that leads me to today and the question that I have to close with. In the last two years, since I started finding out who I am, I made a lot of decisions, some good, some bad. In the end of the day, it led me to fail out of college, be released from the military and have me moving out of my first apartment into my boyfriend's apartment with no job and my parents, brother and sister looking down their noses at me. Despite that, I haven't been happier with who I am in the last 11 years.

I don't know where I want to go in my life, but I know I have a lot of potential to go sky-high in whatever I decide. Before I decide, I need a job. Unfortunately, the job market where I live is non-existent. I'm trying, but there's nothing. It doesn't help that I don't have money for a bus pass and I can't afford to get a new inner tube to replace the popped one that's on my bike. I'm limited to jobs within walking distance, which are less than non-existent.

My question for you is: Can you help me?

deviantART brought me from rock bottom to the top of the world. All I'm asking is that you do it again, one more time. I'm not asking for donations, I want to sell prints from my gallery and I'll do commissions, of anything (at the very least I'll try). Send me a note with what you want and we'll work out a price.

Please, can you help me?