Every so often I get down. I mean really down. I’ll get irritable, emotional, and overall just feel off. I’ve dubbed the times my personal PMS times (Note: Ladies I’m in no way making light of that time of the month. I don’t know how you put up with it. This just proves that females are the superior gender.). And what’s worse is that, logically, I know that I have no good reason to feel this way. Normally it hits me when I’m doing great, and have no valid reason to feel down or depressed. This, of course, only serves to get me even more upset and angry (it’s a vicious cycle). It comes and goes at seemingly random times. It will hit me without warning, and I usually feel this way for anywhere between a week and three weeks. In the past I would always handle it the same way.
Step 1: Find a game or TV show that has a long engrossing story line or rich detailed world.
Step 2: Bury myself in said world, learn all I can about it, and generally shun the rest of the “Real” world.
Step 3: Wait until I wake up one day and not feel all Emo (YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND MY PAIN!!!!).
Pretty much...
And this is how it would go. Every few months I would realize I was feeling a little “off” and I would just dive into whatever world was available to me.
Most often it was a game by Bethesda. Morrowind, Oblivion, and Fallout 3 have all served this purpose a number of times. Of course there was always the tried and true MMO, World of Warcraft. Games like Diablo 2 and Torchlight, have also offered me hours of escape from myself and my feelings. Of course, I would be remised if I didn’t mention games like Final Fantasy (pick one), Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, or Mass Effect, which are the best examples of fleshed out worlds to get lost in.
Then there are the massive amounts of TV shows, which services like Hulu and Netflix now let you watch whole seasons of in a sitting, allowing you to get lost in a long story and character development. I’ve spent many hours watching Lost or Fringe (Love me some J.J. Abrams!). I loved losing myself in these fantastical worlds that are fleshed out over hours and hours of deep story and mythology.
I’m sure what I’m describing isn’t unheard of. In fact I’m relatively certain that more and more this is how most people escape their issues (Sweeping generalizations FTW!).
And why not!? It’s easy. And it’s becoming easier and easier. With today’s technology, how easy is it to get your favorite TV shows streamed to your phone? And how many of us have sunk hours into Angry Birds, trying to kill those smug green pigs? Now any amount of escape is available to us at the touch of a button (or screen), with hardly any waiting. It’s Escape on Demand (must look into trademarking that…)!
So fast forward (or flashback depending on where you are in time) to a week ago and I feel it coming on. I start getting annoyed when the grandma in front of me whips out her War and Peace sized book of coupons in the grocery store and it takes all of my energy to not beat her over the head with that 6-pack of Ensure she’s insisting on saving 20 cents on. I turn on the TV and all of a sudden I want to cry when I find out Glee got renewed for another season. And I can’t even log on to Facebook, for fear of writing hate filled comments on a person’s status update that describes how terrible their life is. Yep, it’s that time again.
But now my life is different. I now have a girlfriend who’s very much a part of my life. I can’t escape for weeks on end into another world, without leaving her behind. And how fair is it to her for me to just “check out” every few months for a week or more into a game or TV show and ignore what’s going on in her life. I know, were the situation reversed, I wouldn’t like it.
But more than that, more than the relationship with her or any of my other friends and family, it’s not fair to me.
By ignoring the problem, and not dealing with it, I have been taken the easy route. Instead of facing how I was feeling and trying to come to grips with it, I instead opted to give up entirely and escape to a different world where those feelings didn’t exists (or at least didn’t matter). I was a coward. Because my feelings didn’t have a logical or rational explanation to them, I ran to a place where everything did have a logical, rational explanation. Why am I feeling this way? I don’t know, but I just leveled up in Fallout 3 and I got another perk to pick and I know that if I get this perk it’ll make me hit harder… and so on and so on.
It’s so easy to do. To ignore what you’re feeling and replace it with something that dulls (or even removes) it and allows you to focus on something that’s fun and/or exciting.
But is it the healthy thing to do? Is it the right thing to do? I can’t speak for anyone else. For myself, personally? The answer is probably no. It’s neither the healthy nor the right thing to do. So this time, instead of escaping into another world to avoid this emotional roller coaster, I’m going to face it head on.
And who knows… maybe this experience will help me ding to the next level in life. ;)
