One of the benefits of being middle-age, at least for me, is that you get to think about life and death, a lot. Well, to be frank, I have been preoccupied with the inevitability of death as far back as I can remember. It wasn't so much of a fascination. It was more like a realization that fueled the decisions that I have made throughout my life. I recognized from an early age that there is an end to me and I should do everything in my power to prioritize myself so that I don't have any regrets before I expire. The difference now that I have lived 40+ years of my life is that there is a sense of creeping dread that I have not felt in the past whenever I think about my end. I suppose when I was younger, I knew - or perhaps I was hopeful - that there was at least some significant distance before I would eventually get there. That illusion is no longer present anymore.
If you thought that this left me scrambling to seek god to ease my emotional turmoil, well, then you just don't know me very well. I am just still struggling with the acceptance part of this particular grieving process. My view on religion has not changed. My view on gaming though definitely has. Not for the worse, but for the better! I have been able to commit to completing a select number of games at a time instead of jumping from titles to titles at will without planning on going back to them. One game that I am invested in currently is Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc on the Personal Computer. I remember playing this game when it first came out on the Vita and I didn't even complete the first chapter back then. I got the Steam version in August of 2018 and I quit somewhere on chapter 2 despite all the delicious twists and turns I encountered in the game. Now, I am on the 4th chapter and there is absolutely no way that I can stop playing this game. It's interesting though because THH is a very dark creation. Basically it involves a bunch of students being trapped in a school and forced to participate in a game of murder where only one person can become the victor. It's somewhat parallel to the things that I am going through right now, this whole idea that you cannot escape a horrible fate, namely death, and that it's being rubbed all over your face day in and day out. It's suffocating.
Remember my longing to find a close gamer friend, or in actuality a gamer lover, that had lingered around for many, many years? Yup, that's completely gone these days. My feeling on that now is that it will happen when it happens. When you love yourself, you pretty much don't need anyone else. I don't need to be validated by others. It's empowering, and it feels really good. This doesn't mean that I plan to be a reclusive hermit and deny incoming friendships. It's just that adding someone else there to participate in my gaming session doesn't add to my overall experience. It's true that I am still working out the kinks to fully accept something that cannot be denied for death comes for us all, except in the year 2500 when all human beings will be replaced by robots, but at least it's good to know that for me, with age comes wisdom and the ability to structure something meaningful, something worthwhile for the remainder of my life.
Life has many joy. Death has nothing.
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