I had betrayed a lot of things over my short lifetime. I have betrayed friends, families, ideals, morals, values and yet the greatest thing that I had betrayed is probably... myself.

I guess it was too much of me to ask myself to change. There are so many things unresolved. So many issues unanswered and yet here I was trying to run away from them. Maybe I was afraid or maybe I just wasn't man enough to face them but the simple fact was that I decided to erase everything who I was in order to save myself.

Ironic? Maybe but who am I to say?

I found my old sketchbooks and stories one day. It was such a blast from the past. Every drawing of mine then looked defined, whole, finished and every story I read, I knew the ending it was meant to have. My drawings, I touch the paper and I can still feel the hours that went by as I layered, sketched, erased that page over and over until I got the picture I held. I remember how proud I was to hold it up to the light, only to see that I had my proportions wrong; the head was too big, the arms were too long and the foot looked like mangled meat. It didn't matter, it was beautiful for me.

As years went by, my stories have become darker. Kid Thunder was replaced by Isaac Matthews and every time I wanted to bring Kid back, it seemed like he will never be the same Kid as he was when I created him. I wanted him as an escape from things, an outlet for my hunger for adventures and romance yet now, it seems he has become heavier, darker, burdened with things I myself do not understand. I made him a villain once and that may have sealed his fate. I made myself a villain, to the world, to its view of justice, to how it works. I tainted Kid into becoming my evil half and I couldn't bear it so I locked him up and threw him away.

Isaac Matthews then came into words. As apathy seemed to be the only answer, I saw my future in Isaac. Someone in suffering, someone in limbo, someone who doesn't care. In this time of depression did my love for writing flamed intensely. I was known to be a "writer" (I use this loosely) because of what Isaac said and did. Episodes of mad depression followed as I traced Isaac. It was then that I developed the habit of waking up in the middle of the night to write, a habit I exhibit whenever I'm depressed. Isaac defined me for who I was becoming but I was afraid of him. Why? Because he was an open sentence. I had no ending for the life Isaac Matthews except ... the utter loss of his being. Unlike Kid who was defined and whole, Isaac was a spur of the moment, a being of sadness that I personified into a character of the Shadowkeeper Journals. His story had no end... it will end in nothing. Alas Isaac Matthews was also locked away.

Probably the character that I betrayed the most was Scion. Who was he? When I created Ghosts, a sequel to Kid's story, I wanted to start anew with a character who was pure. His name meant successor which was aptly so, as he would become Kid's successor as well as suffer the same fate. Scion was me trying to start over things. After the great depression episodes of Isaac Matthews, Scion seemed to be like a scapegoat. I wanted Scion to learn all over again as I do. I want to learn all over again, what things meant. Richmond was there to help (he was a character from Kid's original story) in his growth and he even had someone like Isaac, who was Dreamer, to be his conscience. He was my hope actually, a hope to reconcile the things I left unanswered. I wanted Scion to become the happy ending

I betrayed him the most

I didn't tell him all the mistakes. I was too ashamed to. He did not learn the mistakes and he ended up repeating them. He was never Kid who was whole, he was never Isaac who was calculating, Scion had nothing. He ended up bearing every mistake. Like I said, a scapegoat for all the wrong reasons. He ended up becoming a shadow of a former person. No substance, no meaning, no point and he was then discarded and forgotten.

Now, I feel like I can't create anymore of these characters of mine simply because it's so hard to feel whole. I've been having days of depression in which I feel like I was back in the Isaac days but it feels different because Isaac, who he was, was not real. His frustrations were in the safety of his bubble, my problems now are the deterioration of my defenses. Isaac cannot stand up for me and he was the strongest character that I made. He was a dark side that I fall into but as years went, the comfort of even my own Shadowkeeper cannot bear the facts of life.

As much as how I wanted to change, I guess the basic fact is that I cannot let go of the past. It's just who I am, I hold on to things too much until they hurt. I have come to the conclusion that I cannot be a new person. I cannot be another character. I will always be Kid Thunder, the original. He was whole, defined, me. Isaac Matthews had his time and he will continue to linger on every time my heart's broken or I endure pain. Scion will be a constant reminder of how futile it was to escape mistakes. Kid may have turned into a villain along the way, but now as I write this entry, I may have found the heart to make him who he was again. You may not have known who Kid Thunder was, but he is me. It has always been me. I am glad enough to know if only a handful of people remembered who Kid was, they keep the memory of being whole keen. He had always been an escape from the world, a way to fight back and I may have forgotten that when I gave in and made him conform just as I had.

Kid has to come back