Love for a life

Before you dive in, I have a quick note. This piece really challenged me. Its been in the chamber for months. I have played video games all of my life, but when it comes to writing about them I find myself having difficulty describing the specific effects they have on me. This is probably because whatever thoughts I have while I play a game, I simply have, and don’t write them down. Free to fade into the ether, converted into glucose for my hands to keep a firm grip on the controller.

Please also accept this as a piece in motion. There might be small edits here and there but its mostly finished. Its been kinda kept in purgatory because I couldnt figure out an ending to this, and it didnt flow right. I think ive mostly figured it out, and its not perfect but if I dont release this it will never see another set of eyes. I need this thing inside me to actually see the light of day.

As a sort of preamble to a preamble, and since this piece feels like an acknowledgment of who I am and was when it came to this hobby: I used to drink heavily when I played games, especially when I was playing multiplayer games. It got to a point where I needed a beer in my hand to play any of them. It made them more fun. Almost like I was brute forcing my anxious thoughts, broken dreams and ego to drop so I could more quickly accept the escape from reality. I remember having a thought that maybe it could more easily connect me with that boundless joy I felt when I played games as a kid. Like anything could happen, and these stories were real and constant fuel for my day dreams. The irony of that is by using such a blunt tool you’ve subconsciously acknowledged something was lost in the first place. A bridge has been burned without your knowing.

It wasn’t uncommon for me to drink to the point of getting drunk – which was quite often if the boys were on. Those nights felt like big events, like how one prepares for vacation. You think about it all week at work, and before you get home on Friday you pick up a case and are ready for the beach. It never slips into your job routine, its kept isolated to the weekend so it cant seem too harmful for loved ones. Function still occurs, you’re still a productive member of society but never productive for yourself.

What I didn’t realize is through this very act you start to lock the fun in the bottom of a bottle. It was not uncommon for me to finish most of a 12 pack and play apex with the guys until 5am. I was trying to have fun, but in reality I think I was just running away from my problems. Number 1 of which was my mom was dying and I didn’t know how to process that.

So lets dive in.

It is an utterly disarming experience losing a mother at 23 years old. The shape and tenacity of grief cannot be predicted before ever experiencing it. When a loved one reaches their deathbed and is put into hospice care, I thought it would play out like it does in a movie. Everyone comes together and pours their love into that person, says their goodbyes, and it hurts really fucking badly for a little while and everyone effected forms a closer bond. On the surface level that is mostly true. In the raw, moment to moment reality its more awkward and the pain feels more private. No one can look it in the eye and communication with anything outside an internal voice feels like its stalled altogether.

Strangely enough, you keep smiling at work even though the act feels weird. The work that was once a bit mundane, but otherwise normal; becomes a complete facade. You might break a little bit and the more attentive ones will notice somethings going on, but never brave enough to pry past a script. Laughing at a joke was always followed by a wave of guilt. I shouldn’t be laughing, I should be paralyzed by the monumental impending loss of a loved one – and I was but clearly not enough to send me to an insane asylum. Should it have? But there were those moments when I seemed to forget the grief like a flash of lightning in a rough storm, and the following thunder of sadness was a piercing reminder of reality.

In these confusing acts the realization that time stops for no one came to me, which is a quote I’ve heard but never actually felt so completely. I simultaneously experienced her death and mine – the knowledge that in the end time will continue to move forward for those outside your reality. I am on the outside of hers now, but death will breach mine one day. This brought on a state of emotional paralysis and unavailability in the months leading up to her death, as her symptoms continued to worsen, and stayed far longer afterwards.

My moms ability to communicate effectively vanished at the end of her hospice care – always numbed by fentanyl. I would visit her after work, and on weekends – though not nearly enough; and would have very brief lucid moments with her. There was no breaching that haze, I just hoped she would come to and know I was there, and that alone would be enough. So, I kept her company and played Metroid Dread on my Switch, choosing to get lost in its labyrinths there right beside her, and at home, to escape facing the pain that persisted every moment, and every thought, every day.

Yeah, I am very aware of the irony of playing a game with a title called DREAD in the most depressing moment of my life.

I needed a return to the familiar, a break from my bleak reality. I used to feel guilty about this – how could I do this at such a time? A voice in my head would call me a coward – that all of my time and focus should be on her no matter if I was helpless or not. Its illogical. I mean what was I gonna do, plead with her to stop dying? Yell at the cancer to stop killing her?

The weeks leading up to playing Metroid Dread on her deathbed, and of which continuted to bloom afterwards; were spent on a spiritual search for meaning through video games. It was weirdly instinctual, but at first quite aimless. I first tried out playing what I normally did and thus far played for thousands of hours – online shooters and battle royale types like Apex. Immediately, I could tell something was wrong. Like a puzzle piece couldn’t fit anymore. What once could effectively put me in a trance I now found reflected my pain back at me. I think I wanted a simple escape, but the usual slop filet of games I was feeding myself everyday for years had ceased to satiate me.

It was too stressful, felt empty and hollow and utterly devoid of any kind of spiritual meaning. And in spiritual meaning, I suppose I mean the ability for you to see yourself in a character, and connect both your realities together and figure things out about yourself maybe you had forgotten. Something that shows you a blindspot, or simply just a piece of art I can interpret. I needed something that really pierced my mind, and my heart, like games used to do when I was younger. I needed to go further back to cut through the melancholy of modern gaming.

I felt some kind of gravitation pull towards Nintendo games. Suddenly, I wanted to play every new Pokemon game released on the switch. Suddenly, I wanted to play Animal Crossing with my partner. Suddenly, Zelda: Breath of the wild was at the front of my mind and I needed to play it. Like a flood of games Ive missed out on since my utter devotion to online multiplayer games. And Metroid. I hadn’t thought about playing a Metroid game in years, but Metroid Dread came out and apparently, its really good. I remembered how much I loved Prime as a kid, and though I never finished it; I could still remember the first time I got to Phendrana Drifts. I remember getting lost, or getting stuck and feeling the rush after figuring out a hard puzzle. The satisfaction of getting a power up and feeling like I made progress in my own life, like they were one in the same.

I remember the distinct feeling that Metroid was a series I felt I dropped far too fast. At some point in my childhood I left Nintendo properties in the dust to play more mature themed games, which is a common thread line through most of my life. Always opting for the edge even it offers very little nuance or substance. This felt like a path I could’ve taken, and now I felt like I could do my inner child a solid. Time to stop hogging the controller and let the little dude show me how its done. Naturally, I purchase a switch and a copy of Dread.

It was shocking how much it gripped me, and how fast it did so. The mysterious atmosphere sucked me in and never spit me back out. It evoked the same feeling I felt as a kid, when I first explored the space pirate frigates destroyed interior with that alien soundtrack. It was successfully colliding both these special moments and bridging the gap between past and present.

So in that rhyming with the first level of Metroid Prime, Dread starts you off investigating a distress call from an obscure planet. You’re suddenly dropped right in front of an adversary whom viciously strips you of all your power. In seconds we are made helpless - Samus’s neck was wrapped tightly in Raven Beaks claws, mirroring the grief wrapped so tightly around my own. Its as if I was being given an a perfect emotional release for the exact feelings I felt. And as you play you turn that powerlessness back into power inch by inch. A motif present in most metroidvanias, and I am now sure is part of the allure and love I have for them.

Incase you didn’t know or wanted a more in depth explanation, most metroidvania games worth their salt begin with the character as weak as possible. The goal is to follow a set of “sequences”, or pathways the developer lays out across different zones or levels; so you steadily grow in power until the very end where the power you wield is now unrecognizable from when you first started. This is usually coupled by a complex map system, that keeps you engaged by having you keep track of locked areas. These are areas that are locked off from you, until you find the requisite power up needed to open the door to said area.

My mother, Wendys death gave me a lot of pain. I loved her very much. But it was the catalyst for ending years worth of spiritual suffocation for me. I found that in this moment, completely disarmed, any path lay before me and I could start over, and not just in gaming but in living life in general. It wasn’t immediate, it took quite some time. But I believe I’ve made a good swing at living up to that realization gradually, everyday. Small steps.

I feel like it should be emphasized to the reader ALL of this wasnt something I suddenly realized as I was within the world of Dread, laying on her deathbed. But in hindsight its very clear. So no, I was not laying on my mothers deathbed realizing my life was some type of lie. I was vanishing into a puzzle, something I could solve and save in the moment. But without ever realizing the puzzle was myself until much, much later. It was a stone on a path.

I have studied and now write haiku poetry, with some of it being shared online or even read aloud to strangers. I discovered the healing of sitting meditation. Reading, a hobby I abandoned in middle school, was rediscovered. Ive become a better listener and lover to my partner and more present than ever. Music I never thought Id be so into suddenly sweeps me up off my feet. Writing and journaling was something I silently wanted but never acted on and now I do both. I switched career paths. I went to therapy(though I need to go back, the work is never done). I feel my heart open to many different forms of art than ever before.

I am the only one who can explore and know these parts of myself, no one else. I am the one who has the power to take those steps through these corridors. These were all things once locked behind doors, and have since been opened. The power has been obtained, and now I just have to carry it forward somewhere. When death comes for me, or for us, reader; I hope in our absence we offer the ones we love something. Much like the extinct Chozo offer lost pieces of Samus back to herself. I hope that my eventual death offers a piece of yourself back to you.