“Cootie”

by: Colette Bennett

A purple-haired girl named Nei was one of my first friends. She was beautiful, with pointed, elfen ears and shy eyes. She didn’t talk back, but she didn’t need to. When I played Phantasy Star II, she was the one I felt closest to. She’d gone through a tough past, and she was quiet, but I could tell she was the kind of person I wanted to know in real life. I even used to imagine what her laugh would sound like, throaty but sonorous, like the sound of a weighty, thick bell.

I was eleven years old when I met Nei. It was around the same time that I started to suffer from anxiety. My mother was rarely home and drank often. At school, I didn’t relate to other kids well. Hyperventilation became a normal state, and I always fought for breath. I secretly carried a plastic figurine of Ariel from The Little Mermaid in the pocket of my plaid uniform jumper. I remember standing on the blacktop and watching other kids laugh and play together, tracing over the shape of Ariel’s tail in my pocket with my thumb and forefinger over and over.

Even before I discovered a world to which I was granted passage to by holding a controller, I didn’t quite fit with people. I said strange things. Girls laughed and pointed. I was called cruel names: “Cootie,” because girls thought I looked dirty. They all had long hair, but mine was short, with awkward, poorly cut bangs. They thought I was ugly, that I looked like a boy, and they never hesitated to tell me so. 

I’d go home from these long days at school, press the rectangular power button on my Nintendo, and blissfully forget it all, as if it never existed. One night, my mom’s boyfriend stayed up late with me, determined to help me finish Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. “It’s your shadow!” I yelled at the end, passing the controller to him and passionately cheering him on through the fight. My little fingers sought to help, grabbing the controller back when his thumbs were too tired. In the end, we triumphed, jumping up and down and flailing our limbs in abject happiness.

I went to my grandmother’s house once and tried to explain to her in detail about Nei and how she was related to Neifirst, and how it felt when she died. As I tried to describe her, I started to cry, drawing my head to my knees and shaking forcefully as I choked out the words. Through a blurry gloss, she looked back at me, bewildered, afraid. I was heartbroken about the loss of a woman I had never met. I missed her.

When I started writing about games 20 years later, I had one clear aim in mind. I had things to say, and I wanted to express my thoughts and share them, but moreso, I wanted to know that the things I was saying might get to other kids who had been like me. In the world, I always nodded quietly when people spoke to me, eager to agree, hoping to be accepted, if just for a moment.. In my games, I never had to do such a thing. I was absorbed freely into every group, secrets were whispered into my warm ear. I kept them carefully, close to my heart, on a dangling chain. I was honored to know these people, journey with them, love them, and mourn them when I had to separate from them. 

By walking over and over again with digital companions, I learned how to befriend others. The world of games was a refuge, but it also presented a training ground. Eventually, human beings in the real world wanted to talk about games, and I was able to listen. Experiences were shared, even fumbling, painful ones. Sometimes, we even bonded because we had been afraid, lonely, small. And in sharing that, we became big.

Remembering Matt Hughes

by: dreadfulblog

About four weeks ago Matt Hughes’ death was all but passed over thanks to another industry talking point that’s bellyached its way to top of games journalists’ list of professional tragedies.

Hughes was a freelance games journalist whose work appeared on Joystiq and GamesRadar among other sites. His apparent suicide, which was first reported all the way back at the beginning of November, should be remembered for two reasons.

One, because like most dealing with depression Hughes suffered it in silence, making it all the more necessary to put it back on table and onto the blog circuit where with any luck it will keep from getting swept back into obscurity. And two, for making almost no visible impact on the industry whatsoever.

Hughes’ death roughly coincided with the start of DoritosGate one month ago, out of which was born a full-blown journalist-led investigation into the blurring lines between professionalism and commercialism. Fits of anger are de rigueur among games bloggers right now. While the industry is being hauled out to the Stocks for possibly aligning itself too closely with commercial entities, particular effort has also gone into providing a cold bucket of water for any journalist who’s still enamoured with the way things are.

Regardless of where you stand on all of this, the result, at least in retrospect, has been an impressive show of what can happen when journalists throw their weight into their favourite pet issues. Weeks of extensive self-analysis in the industry.

About the same amount of time has passed since Hughes’ suicide, but the significance of this whole dreary saga of Lauren Wainwright, of corruption, and the now semi-iconic Geoff Keighley Emperor Palpatine impression has continued to read fresh because of the work of a few impassioned Internet users who have been burning the midnight oil on this stuff.

Comparatively, one week and a few blog posts following Hughes’ suicide, his death was already downgraded from a few online eulogies to a passing human interest story. It comes down to priorities. It’s nearing December now and the neighbourhood watch surrounding the Wainwright narrative seems to be quieting down. But now even in these brief moments of tranquility, of which in this industry there are very few, I think we’ve got our priorities all wrong.

Take it from me, depression is a monster of a thing but it can’t be dealt with alone.

It’s been sarcastically referred to as The Artist’s Reward, but I prefer this description, which I’ll paraphrase:

In military vernacular there is a term called “the fog of war.” This originated after the Napoleonic war, at a time before the invention of smokeless gun powder when shots from muskets would result in a fog so thick soldiers would lose sight of the enemy, making it impossible to tell apart friend from foe.

The first person to write about this in depth was the Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz, whose solution, in part, was this: “The first thing [needed] here is a fine, piercing mind, to feel out the truth with the measure of its judgment.”

Which makes Depression, perhaps, the ultimate expression of the fog of war. You can see the result of that enemy’s attacks but you can’t see the enemy, and worse, that fog can become your reality; Worrying then, when as Clausewitz says, we can only rely on our heads – Because it’s hard to rage against a war when it’s going on in you.

Which is why we need to rely on each other. And in the past month we’ve shown, even at its most maniacal, the industry can make a difference just by talking.

- originally published on 11/25/2012 at dreadfulblog, republished with permission.

For Sally

by: Jay Henningsen

My exposure to people suffering from depression has been a long, strange trip. Several members of my mother’s side of the family have struggled with various degrees of clinical depression and Seasonal Affective Disorder for large portions of their lives. As an adolescent, I honestly never really paid much attention to their problems. Depression was a non-issue for me, and my family never discussed it. 

After my parents got divorced, however, mental illness began to seep into my life in odd ways. Fearing I was not coping well with my parents’ breakup, some well-meaning relatives who were also suffering from depression made the suggestion to my mother that I should talk to a child psychologist. While I didn’t feel like anything was wrong with me, I also didn’t see the harm in talking to someone, so I agreed. My counselor was an amiable woman who was easy to talk to, and I discussed many things with her over the next few years. 

This friendly child psychologist told my mother on numerous occasions that there was nothing wrong with me. Sure, I was introverted and frequently chose books and video games instead of human interaction, but she insisted there was nothing clinically wrong with me and no reason for my mother to worry. These other depressed relatives, however, would have none of that diagnosis, and they convinced my mother that I needed more serious help.

When I was about 16 years old, I uncovered this one day when I answered the phone, and a psychiatrist’s office was calling to confirm an appointment for me. Thankfully, my wits overcame my shock, and I politely informed the lady on the phone that this was a mistake and that I had no reason to seek their services. After I hung up the phone, I went into the living room and immediately confronted my mother.

After the shocked expression fell off of her face, she tearfully admitted what was going on. I don’t remember exactly what I said to her at that point, but I basically chided her for both not listening to the professional and never actually asking me if I felt anything was wrong. I believe that was the last time I ever let my mother make a medical decision for me. I also resolved to never let another person aside from a trained and licensed professional tell me that there was anything wrong with me.

Because of these experiences, I developed a rather cynical view of people with mental illnesses. I thought they were all people who were too weak or too lazy to deal with life’s problems. And most of these problems weren’t really that bad to begin with, since all of the depressed people I knew were white, middle-class Americans who were related to me. I pictured them all as people who thought that mood-altering medication was the solution to every hardship, and I thought they wanted to push this solution on me simply because I didn’t act the same way they did.

This perception wasn’t helped by the ugly confrontation I had with one of these relatives after I came home from college years later. Once again, I had a family member insisting that I needed help because I stayed up late, slept late, and stayed home reading books when I wasn’t working. This time, however, I reacted in anger and made some particularly unkind statements which I grew to regret later in life. Sadly, my relationship with this person never fully recovered, even though I realize now that her intentions were good and she thought (albeit incorrectly) that I was having some of the same experiences that she did.

As is often the case, it took a tragedy to shake the views that I had developed over the earlier part of my life. My wife met and befriended a woman close to our age who I will call Sally.We later discovered that Sally was struggling a lot. She had a bad job and an unreliable car, she lived alone, and she didn’t have many friends in the area. She felt her situation was hopeless and that she didn’t have much chance of improving it.

My wife, who is a much more caring and giving person than I am, continued to try to help this friend despite all the breakdowns and hysterical fits. She drove to the hospital not once, but twice, late at night to get Sally’s keys, so that we could take care of her cats after she decided to admit herself to the psych ward. Finally, we were able to get in touch with Sally’s father who offered her the opportunity to move in with him after he finished moving himself. After a few seemingly positive conversations, it seemed like things were getting better for my wife’s friend.

Then, a few days later, we got word that Sally walked out of her apartment, entered her car which was parked on the street, put a loaded shotgun to her head, and pulled the trigger.

My wife and I were both shocked. We had thought she was on the verge of turning her life around. Later, we found out that she was rejected by a man, and this event seemingly led to her taking her own life. We also believe that she stopped taking her medication before this happened.

Sally actually did leave a note behind, and she asked that my wife and I adopt one of her cats so that it was not sent to an animal shelter. While this cat was a bit difficult to care for, we honored her wishes. 

I understand now that some people truly need help, and I realize that attitudes like I used to have can make it more difficult for these people to get the care that they desperately need. This event caused me to re-examine some of my views, and I now have a constant reminder how serious mental illness can be. 

- Jay Henningsen, 11/23/2012

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Get Over It

by: Jay Posey

No one ever told me depression felt so much like anger.

Not an explosive anger, or even a focused one.  Just a low-intensity burn, always simmering beneath the surface.  A pressure, like someone sitting on my chest.

And boredom.  

Never interested in what I was doing, never looking forward to whatever would come afterwards.  All I wanted to do was nothing.  But even sitting alone in the dark, there was never any rest.  It just felt like waiting … waiting for the next thing I was going to have to endure.

And guilt. 

I had a good job.  Making video games for a living, for crying out loud.  A beautiful, loving wife.  Two amazing kids.  I had friends out there, out of work, or struggling in their marriages, or walking dangerously close to alcoholism.  Friends fighting wars.  What right did I have, of all people, to feel anything but gratitude every day of my life?

Get over it.  

I don’t know how many days I told myself that.  Too many.  And I thought I was making it work.  I didn’t think people were noticing.  I could keep going.  Keep going until I got over it.  Keep going.  

The fact is, I couldn’t get over it.  Not on my own.  I couldn’t even recognize that there was something wrong, something real that needed real healing.  Not until a dear friend of the family asked my wife if I was okay. 

“He just doesn’t seem like himself.”

It’s easy to lie to ourselves, to tell ourselves we’re okay,  that no one notices, that we can make it if we just tough it out.  It’s hard to ask for help.  It’s hardest to admit there really is something wrong that we can’t fix on our own.

If you’re experiencing depression or anxiety, you are not alone.

I’m better.  I’m better because I finally admitted I needed help.  And people helped me understand that depression is real.  A real thing that needs real healing.  And now that I know what it looks like, I recognize it when it tries to come back.

It’s okay not to be perfect.  It’s okay to ask for help.  And there is help.   

I’ll Never be a Normal Person

by: Anonymous

When I was 12 or 13, I told my parents I was really stressed out. I don’t remember why I said it, but I remember lying in bed every night, wide awake, my mind racing with worries that would probably seem absurd now, and I couldn’t make it stop. I didn’t know how to describe this, because I didn’t know that there was a difference between everyday stress and more serious anxiety, and my parents dismissed it. What could someone in middle school be so stressed about? That was over 15 years ago and I haven’t brought it up to them again.

As I got older, it got worse. I started having panic attacks as a teenager that felt, at first, like I was dying. I developed insomnia in high school that lasted all the way through college, so I spent half of my teen years and my early twenties staying up all night and grabbing naps during the day when work or school allowed it, and I constantly felt like I’d been run over by a truck. My sleep schedule finally normalized, but the anxiety didn’t go away. Over the years, I’ve had some friends and roommates who realized that I wasn’t quite okay, mostly because of the never sleeping thing, but I never talked about it at length. It’s not that they didn’t care, I just didn’t think I could be helped. I felt like I was broken and wondered why I couldn’t just be a normal person.

When I was 24, I landed my absolute dream job: writing about video games full-time at a fledgling website. I was there for three years, and in that time I worked almost non-stop. Nights, weekends, holidays, on vacation, there was never a day when I didn’t do at least something work-related. Unfortunately, not everyone shared my enthusiasm, and over time my dream job turned into the most toxic work environment I’d ever experienced. As millions of dollars were squandered and horrible decisions beyond my control were made, I spent months and months as an absolute wreck. Every two weeks, I felt like I couldn’t breathe as I wondered if we were going to get paid. Every time someone called a meeting, I felt sick to my stomach. I was constantly on edge and prone to panic attacks more frequently than at any other point in my life. Everyone there was stressed out, but I could barely function—and continued to work relentlessly even as everything fell apart. When it finally ended, I was more relieved than anything else.

That didn’t make the problem go away. Most of the time, it’s just there, and I’m used to it. My mind starts racing as soon as I wake up in the morning, cycling through everything that I should be worried about. If I catch myself in a good mood, I immediately feel like something’s going to go wrong. I get a tight feeling in my chest that gets worse when I’m more anxious. When it’s really bad, I get really tense and shaky, and then I’m sore and exhausted for a couple of days. Sometimes it’s triggered by stressful events, and sometimes it just comes out of nowhere.

The only person who knows how bad it gets is my husband. When we were still dating, I had a humiliating panic attack at a party that forced me to be more open about my issues, and thankfully he didn’t run in the opposite direction. He does his best to understand what I’m going through. I brought it up to a doctor once, in passing. He suggested I cut back on caffeine, and I told him he was making me more anxious. That was the closest I’ve ever come to attempting to get help.

So why have I avoided talking about this? Is it because I don’t want to burden my friends with my problems, or because I’m afraid they’ll think I’m crazy—or overreacting and exaggerating? I don’t know. Talking about it is hard. Writing this is hard. But as I’m finding out, I’m not nearly as alone as I thought I was. And though I’ll never be a normal person (for reasons that go far beyond anxiety), I don’t think I’m broken anymore… most of the time. I’ve been not talking about this for over a decade, and it hasn’t helped. The thought of sharing this story has been terrifying, but now that it’s on the page, it feels different. I know it won’t fix everything, but maybe I just needed to know that I don’t need to keep this to myself. Dealing with constant anxiety is exhausting enough. I’m done with making it worse by carrying it around like a horrible secret.

-Anonymous, 11/20/2012

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