Tell me what to fix
When Video Games are your Only Friends
Jakey, dammit, you’re making me wanna get nakey with you, do some dick flips, and write video scripts again.
Hopefully this is an actual video soon.
Back in school, what did you have? Elementary school comes to mind as my worse time in my life. I didn’t have a social sphere, and being trapped in special ed didn’t help with that either. I wasn’t allowed to really sit with anyone except the special kids at lunch or this one kid that liked having me around because he thought I was funny, and the cool people that I was sorta friends with in second grade had either died in a car crash or moved.
Yeah, dark shit for a 8 year old.
So, I had a CD player, a gameboy Color, maybe an advance?, and a PS2 at home that played Spyro 2 and 3, and gra turismo 3 till I killed it because my parents didn’t get me a save cart.
During this time, I didn’t have anyone to really chat with except this one chick who turned out to be as much of a gay fag as I am. Ironic really, because at that time we were watching all the kids around us try to “date” and not actually learn about each other normally. Kids were bullied, kids hung out, but I was just the quiet one on the playground that walked around with my CD player playing now thats what I call a merry little shitmas part 47, robosanta’s revenge, and I just wanted to be at home with my PS2 and gameboy.
Back in this time I remember a lot of time playing pokemon gold and hiding in the family room so no one could find me. I didn’t want to be around people, still don’t really, and I think the only way I would have broken and gotten worse socially is if that one dickbag teacher Mrs. Bean had taken my gameboy like she always threatened to.
Many a day spent running around in Johto and Kanto while I watched the crappy Kanto TV show on the weekends and occasionally went to a friends house to play Smackdown VS Raw and be bored for 6 hours while my mom went to work. It was around this time my cousin would give me Counter Strike and Quake to play with, and I’d gain more interest in PC games slowly, but I was still just trying to hide and find what I liked about myself before I tried to find what I liked in other people.
At one point I remember looking up from some shitty Dukes of Hazard game, Racing home?, and seeing chess club. And while I didn’t know that I’d be in there in middle school and meet my best friend in the world, short time crush, and now sort of mentor, I got more of an interest in games versus other people.
Eventually I met this kid named Jordan. He was quiet like me, and what brought us together at the end of 5th grade was that we both liked bikes, clouds, and video games. We never really had anything else in common than that. He played sports, I played french horn, but we both dicked around in Modern Warfare 2 in Terminal trying to see who could kill the other faster after we spawned.
This friendship only lasted till first year of High School, but those 3 or 4 years were some of the most memorable for me.
Slowly, as I became more socially connected to people BECAUSE of video games, I learned how to leverage myself on my gameboy and PS2, later DS, to try and connect with people. Suddenly I’m in Theatre class in middle school playing Metroid Prime Hunters under the table with 16 other people and top scoring because its just Quake 3 on a foldable device and I know how to quake jump. Though when the teacher found out she was really mad and… Well it was really funny either way.
Later in high school I became more secluded again. I was really depressed after figuring out I was gay in 8th grade. I didn’t have anyone to talk to, I was terrified to ask my parents what to do about it or who to ask for guidance, and when I finally decided to bring it up with my parents I wrote a note, placed it on their bed, hid in my room, and when my dad found the note and brought it downstairs to my mom I was scared he was coming in my room to yell at me. They didn’t bring it up with me for a week, probably because they saw how skiddish I was, but I was scared they were going to throw me out. So not only did I hide in video games again, I was discovering the internet.
Finally my town had been blessed with Broadband and my Neighbors left their wifi open. I found out about linux, IRC, played TF2 and counterstrike online for the first time and got wrecked, and the panic became a muted scream in the back of my head. Though it hasn’t really gone away since, its because of music and video games that I got through any of that cravy first year of high school.
I got obsessed with drawing. It was all I did for 3 months and I even failed classes because I was doing my best to just keep it together and not break down and cry in class. When I got home I’d hide in my room for as long as possible and play an illegal copy of audiosurf and watch torrented movies till I had to do chores or have dinner. Then I’d go to bed, wake up, and endure all this fear that, looking back now, has been, and was, really irrational. Eventually Chess Club was a big part of my life, having won some medals from competitions, I tried to play with people again but had gotten so rusty that I just gave up. Though me and Phil were still best buds, still are.
When I was graduated from high school I got something like 400 bucks to buy college books as my mom had decided that it was better to rush her nervous wreck of a son off to college rather than let him process what the hell was even going on in his mind. Instead of buy books I blew that 400 bucks on video games. I hid in my room playing .Hack Infection and Sly Cooper on a refurbished PS2 I got for my birthday till it was time to go to a shitty catholic school that only scared me more because of the meme of christians are anti-gay. And then I made friends by accident at lunch one day after hiding in my dorm for 2 months blasting club music and drum and bass trying to learn how to use DJ software and playing Battlefield 3 on the PS3 I got that XMas.
Eventually I dropped out, still a nervous wreck and even thought of jumping off the academic building, planned it out and everything, and a post on facebook killed that plan almost immediately and I was quarantined to my dorm room for 2 days. No out or in only to classes with a campus security officer at my tail. When they decided I was ok, they left and it was just me again. I’d had a big fight with my friends, my boyfriend at the time had broken up with me, and it was just me in this empty room with a PS3 and a gamecube.
And just like those 3 months in Freshman year of high school, 7th grade of middle school, or basically all of elementary school, I ditched class to play video games by myself and hide from the world. I wanted to die, but I also wanted to see Solid Snake kick Sniper Wolf’s ass.
Now I’m here with a shitty laptop from 2004 writing a script. Dropped out of college, still depressed, playing video games till I have to go to bed for work at 4AM. I hate my job and hope that either something will come up that I can just do and enjoy, whether its music, art, computer work, anything but this hole I’ve dug myself into over the last few years.
But at least I still have video games.