I loved the water but it didn't love me back

Content warning for mentions of abuse & neglect.

Images in this post contain Suggestive rating skimpy swimsuit art.

No genitalia is shown but contains partial nudity i.e butts/hips.

There's lots of pictures. Please give them a moment to load.

This post isn't easy for me to write as it directly references the hardest part of my life and several near-death experiences; but as you're willing to read paragraphs about a stranger on Bluesky, I treat you the respect of not being vague or overly sensational when I actually get to the point(s).

TLDR: I grew up in the Caribbean and my childhood sucked but I'm still oceanpilled anyway and chose happiness over spite. I've also been working on a game for 6 years and never told anyone but I put download/discord links at the bottom k thx 4 reading bye

For anyone who's ever seen my art on Bluesky, it's pretty obvious what my main focus is.

The above are just my most recent works in 2025; I've been doing this type of illustration for years (During my working-artist era, it wasn't as often as I would've liked - maybe 1 a year.)

I have examples going further back as well, from 2019:

2018: (Soft feature of my slime girl phase as well)

2017:

2016: (Later finished in 2019)

What do all these pretty pictures have to do with my life? Well, I have to start with the (puts-some-anime-to-shame) backstory.

I was born in the Midwest, which is full of plains, meadows, and flat horizons. It's common to see scenery like this even a mile or two outside of any major civilization and between smaller ones.

It always felt like home, I even (embarrassingly) fell in love with country music singing about tailgates, lakes, and fucking your first girlfriend in a corn field. I still listen to both old & modern country as a majority of my playlists now. There's a surprising overlap between Southern and Caribbean culture too.

When I was 10, my parents moved me & my siblings with very little warning to the USVI. As a child, hearing "Your whole life will be left behind in 6 months. We lied. We're actually moving permanently." was pretty earth-shattering. That's a 5 (& a half) hour flight from Florida. The largest island, St. Croix, is 84 sq mi. That's only slightly larger than the landmass of Brooklyn, NY.

I didn't even finish 6th grade; I had started the dorky D.A.R.E program that most 90-00s kids remember but I never finished it and wasn't even included on the T-shirts at the end of the year since I moved over winter break. That's the start of breadcrumbs disappearing me.

When we arrived, we lived 10 feet from the sea. This isn't literally where I lived, but it's comparable. I could put on my flippers and my goggles and snorkel to see the fish, shells, and sea-life in the knee-deep water outside my home any time I wished. I became familiar with the ocean air and sound of waves.

It was beautiful yet depressing - I was now at the mercy of everything inland. That vast horizon meant no help was coming to save me, I realized in the years that followed. I didn't think of the ocean this way for a while, but when I did it became impossible to unsee.

Aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins were told I didn't wish to speak to them so they lost touch with me and I was forgotten about. They just believed it, I guess.

Winter break came and went, January and February, and I wasn't in school yet. Turns out it's expensive to live in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of kids; school alone would've been $3k a month for all of us. My parents bought a cheap religious-lens curriculum program and filed the paperwork to declare us homeschooled. So, uh, a (now 11) year old left alone all day with a laptop. Yeah.

Homeschooling is popular in the territories, especially for white non-natives, so this wasn't anything unusual. Most of the other white kids I met were homeschooled too. My parents were pretty racist & didn't want us going to a public school with the locals, so the details specifying race aren't just thrown in because I feel like it, this actively affected the trajectory of my life.

And that was it. I didn't really have any friends before I moved, so nobody kept up with me after I left. I couldn't make any new friends since I wasn't actually in school, but I DID have to go to church every week so at least I knew a few dozen people (Who practiced a religion I found ridiculous that actively encouraged abusive parental supremacy, but hey, it's something).

I dealt with other problems at home. The usual Cinderella stuff:

Denied food. I nearly starved. I was 120 pounds at 6'.

Forced volunteer/missionary labor, often beaten, gaslit, etc.

I caught a rare Malaria-esque illness when I was 15, which turned into Long Covid before Covid existed. I probably should've died since I didn't receive any medical care, but I made it anyway. It triggered Fibromyalgia among other chronic illness I'll be dealing with for life. I went bald during this.

Multiple abuse-experienced people have heard snippets & insist I need to write a book because true crime podcasts would clamour to chatter about the depth & depravity of my suffering. No.

My parents never put me "back" in school. Myself and my siblings were full of varying degrees of shame (or in some cases, enjoying the free ride getting a diploma for 0 work) that we simply lied about learning anything when asked. Uh, yeah, sure I totally know we're learning about protons and neutrons right now, I vaguely recall the program mentioning that in between questions asking what day God rested on. I had to remind my sister before we went to church outings what grade she was pretending to be in this year.

(After a lot of anxiety attacks & being afraid of failure, I got my GED in 2024; an uneventful pass of all categories on my first try.)

As we got older and it became harder to hide something was "off" about my family (Like my siblings starting to turn 18 with no life plans and no mentions of having graduated), I was further socially excluded as teens my age went off to college, military, etc. Most of the homeschooled kids enrolled in the private school to be with their friends for Junior-Senior years, too. Those who knew my problems avoided us to evade responsibility for refusing to confront my parents over our treatment; and those who were oblivious were happy to believe the lies that I was lazy and mean, not starving and abused. I stole food from social gatherings. I ate rotten food with bugs in it at home. I slept all the time & in weird places. I'm alive, aren't I? That's why.

In extraordinary circumstances and force of will to see it through, I escaped the cult-like island prison my parents artfully built around their detainment of me in late 2017 at 18. The next several years were spent trying to put myself back together, but I'm not really interested in talking about that right now. When I left it was during a humanitarian crisis; the aftermath of Irma / Maria.

(I made funnie posts on FA to cope with category 5 hurricanes lol)

I told very few people I was going to leave when the opportunity came. Half didn't believe me and the other half narced. My parents were happy for people to assume I simply perished in the disaster, or just never bothered to correct anyone. No one followed up about me since I barely existed on paper either. For what it's worth, I think I wasn't intended to survive. There was a 6 digit life insurance policy on me.

In the years between landing and leaving...It was me, the sea, and silence. I hopped between MMO addictions like Wizard101, dying flash browser games, and the like. Picked up drawing at some point and spent all day doing that since I had nothing else to do. One game in particular stuck with me though, and I doubt you've heard of it.

MARDEK RPG.

Developed in 2007 & abandoned in 2010, this JPRG-inspired flash parody of FF-esque games has a story & universe vastly more compelling than the teenage indie developer ever intended.

At its peak having a few million plays, it's a forgotten gem.

(Game spoilers below)

The lore of this Medieval-inspired fantasy universe is that there's elements (of course there's Elements!!) & their power is centered from huge Crystals housed in Generic Themed Temples; guarded by Generic Mythical Guardians. This concept is an integral part of the game's storyline(s).

I had played since the beginning, with Ch1 & Ch2 releasing in 2007 and Ch3 released in 2010. In Ch2; you befriend a cagey sorceress with a rare ability to cast an underwater breathing spell. It comes up accidentally as a Lake Hag monster attacks a town; and you venture into the region's largest body of water to slay the beast in her cave Out Of The Goodness Of Your Protagonist Heart.

While underwater, there's a path she blocks you from taking for paper thin reasons. At the end of the chapter's storyline, she leaves your party and disappears referencing a mysterious "Duty". Heartbroken, the protagonist says goodbye.

As players guessed, she was cucking you from finding the Water Temple. Fate had other plans - you find alternate means of Aqualung, and venture to the temple yourself a couple in-game years later. It's at the bottom of the lake, but while underground and underwater is not itself submerged.

This character is Emela; and her story is a depressing parallel to mine in a couple of ways. Born to presumably hydromaniac parents who were themselves the Water Guardian(s), she grew up socially isolated as she lived under a lake stuck in an ancient temple. Sent away to learn some life skills with other teenagers, her brief adventure with you (The protagonist) was her only social outing. She did fall in love with your best friend, at least.

The player doesn't find out all of this until much later through artfully placed backstory artifacts throughout Ch3. She recognizes you but you don't recognize her. The "Duty" was that her parents were murked and it's her turn to be a Guardian now. You end up taking the Crystal for plot reasons and leave, the Temple decays to a corrupted/undead state, and she's alone beneath the waves again...

Emela's in-game portraits & my own fanart of each

'Her eyes are a brilliant, mesmerising shade of blue, and they almost appear to glow...' - Encyclopedia entry

I could spend ages (And have in the past to friends, usually breaking down in tears doing so) explaining how this niche game character ended up having such a similar upbringing to me: Alone; Distant parents, a life she didn't ask for and didn't want surrounded by vast aquatic beauty but can't bring herself to appreciate any of it.

I made a very heartfelt piece of Emela in 2023. It's viewable in both mountain and lake-side upright orientations, featuring her Ch2 and Ch3 outfit and demeanors. My own life drastically changed around the time I made this piece; I got married and left yet another unfortunate situation. (Alt text the same for both photos)

This artwork took me over a year to finish due to those life changes causing me to need to take a hiatus from art entirely, which only adds to the emotional value of the piece IMO. This is one of the first pieces I finished after my break in 2022-2023.

That artwork is here on Bluesky if you'd like to throw it a repost. It's actually my very first piece posted on the platform and only has about 25 likes as I write this.

I grappled with finding myself in the Midwest again after leaving the USVI but not feeling entirely at home. I had wanted to return for years, the city-edge suburbs are where my earliest memories are. However, spending nearly a decade and most of my life at that point in the USVI also left me with a longing for the sea.

I haven't & probably never will return to the Caribbean, but that doesn't mean I don't miss it. As I put in the title, I loved the water, but it didn't love me back. I was ashamed to want the paradise that chewed me up and left me for dead. That took a few years to start unlearning too.

So I did/do the only thing I can think to do. I drew the ocean over and over again to create the happiness and belonging I wish I had when I was near it. My art as a teenager was very dark, like my life prospects, but found itself increasing in color and theme as my mental health improved. Look at the difference between these galleries:

2014-2016, living with my parents

2024-2025, living with my husband

*Only featuring pieces not already seen in this blogpost.

Do I look happier? Do you think my life is better now? I surely do.

Drawing themes like that in a place like this communicates the suffering I was put through better than any words can.

You can also see it in my desk setup between 2024 and 2025.

My black and white decor was a carryover from other eras and I renovated my workspace in a similar manner to my art.

2024:

2025 (Show-your-setup work event, personal info hidden)

(My husband didn't notice the nuance either until he proofread this and said to me "Wait, you DID put the black decor in storage!")

Artist merch links for 2025 setup are here .

The End - Or the beginning?

So what's next? And what happened to Emela?

I revisited the game in 2019 and helped start a community remastering & continuing the series. I met my husband there. Our mod has 19 releases & Discord is almost at 1,000 members! I provide spritework and map design; he composes the OST. We've been at it for 6 years & our work will likely take another 6.

I've been very shy talking about this fanmodding community and project since I've been harassed before & didn't want to link my two 'aliases' but those losers are long gone and I deserve to share my joy in its full contexts.

I've given a lot of love to the Water Temple dungeon:

& currently the team is working on a dungeon featuring

a, uh...another Water Temple! Here's some spritework so far!

I did post this one to Bluesky since I'm really proud of it.

This game helped save my life two different times!

Both by its story relating to me and leading me to my spouse.

I've drawn Emela several times over the years; some of these pictures have been either posted on Bluesky or previously shown throughout this post - now uncropped.

My then-boyfriend commissioned a set of "Serpentressa Scalemail" armour inspired from the actual Water Guardian, this lobster thing.

If you're genuinely interested in the game that's inspired me as an artist AND that I've also made tons of pixel art for, check it out:

Project updates are posted HERE

See a picture book of my before/afters HERE

Join the discord & play the current version HERE

But, um, it has nothing to do with my Bluesky and I don't post unrelated art there. So yeah. Don't be weird, please.

As for my art profile / OCs in general - None of that is changing! I don't have any dramatic exclamations or announcements. I have just been thinking about all of this for a while and have never written it up. If you notice me super quiet on Bluesky for a bit, I'm probably developing the game, and vice versa...

I wanted to explain when I say "I love the ocean" it's more like....

I wanted love and I couldn't find it, so I created it with a universe of ocs filled with characters experiencing happiness in a setting where I only found despair.

I don't draw my ocs upset, in danger, or uncomfortable. I can't change my past, but I can honor past me by doing my best to live the life I wished I had. You should do things that you enjoy even if its association has been tainted by pain. Healing requires confrontation of the self. Thank you for reading! ❤︎

Honorable Mentions:

I oceanmax in a few video games...

I've been playing Webkinz since 2008. I got into room design a few years ago during the beginning of the panny, & I won a Room Design Award for the first room as an Admin Pick:

A waterpark!

Day and Night fountain grove!

A rather funky Sauna furniture set I fell in love with

I didn't end up doing anything with the last room, but it's fun to collect various animated water items and stick them all together. It's like my little dopamine farm.

when we had COVID over new years I spent 80 hours in Raft having a lot of fun on the open sea (occasionally with my husband & friends) and messing around in sandbox mode to build the boat of my dreams. I was pretty obsessed with Raft for a few weeks.

The Cringest Of Them All

I planned to get the MARDEK Water element glyph tattooed on me at one point as part of a sleeve I was designing. I decided not to get any ink for other reasons, but I was preparing to have a 2007 flash game's oceanposter symbol drawn into my skin. Forever.