Perhaps it was a weekend—on a listless yet beautiful day, I was lying in bed, paralyzed not by the comfort of depression, but by its sheer weight. Thoughts of killing myself over and over again weighed relentlessly on my mind. In my state of powerlessness, I stared blankly at the parched, peeling ceiling like a dead fish. I am not sure how much time passed, but suddenly, in that dark room—a place that was, by its very nature, dark—something arrived that was the polar opposite of my surroundings. It was a single ray of light.

Through a gap in the rusted iron bars, a slender line of light descended and settled into my room. I still regret not taking a photo of it, but that one beam brought life into a room that had been lifeless. As I watched that light, a sense of courage and a hope from an unknown source began to stir within me. I stood up to see where it was coming from. I saw an open window glass afar, glaring with sunlight; the light bumped into another neighboring window and then onto my own window pane. It had found its way through a very small crack.

A few days later, I went to a local cafe, ordered a coffee, and sat at an outdoor table with my colored pencils. The memory was so vivid and beautiful that I felt I had to record it. While I had always kept a written journal, I had never really tried an art diary; I felt an experience this miraculous was well worth preserving. That drawing became the beginning of my series and established the line motif—the single thin line that represents Light in my work: "Light Coming Through a Crack."