Gamers Saved My Life

Dave Matney discusses how, after becoming a father at 17, and both enduring and engaging in infidelity, a group of gamers saved him from committing suicide. 

As a child of the 80’s, video games have always been part of my life — sleepovers we held just to play Golden Axe, Killer Instinct, Silent Hill, and a few D&D all-nighters, as well. Video game culture was rampant in my schools, in everything I read, everything I watched on TV, arcades existed in every mall and gas station I could find, and the long line of game-to-movie adaptations meant that I could consume video games everywhere I went. All things considered, the only thing that probably “saved” me from a fat, acne-ridden, grease-ball gamer was a cocktail of good genes and the dumb luck to be in the right place at the right time. Now, the night I switched my focus full-time from video games to girls is as clear as the 20/20 of reflection can be.

From the time I was 15, to about 19, I could probably count the number of times I held a video game controller, or calculated my THAC0, on both hands (maybe with a foot or two included, but not much more). I was a walking hormone, sticking my penis in places a level 20 paladin would dare not go, and absolutely destroying my life in the name of getting my rocks off. I had a kid 9 days before my 17th birthday, dropped out of school shortly after, and moved in with a girl I had just met the day after I was legally an adult; a girl I ended up cheating on constantly — a trend I would repeat for years. I had no job to pay my bills until I was almost 20, and resorted to shoplifting anything I could think of to feel like I was worth anything. While I was 100% sober the entire time, I doubt drugs could have left such a stain on my life.

When I was 21, I hit rock bottom; I was living with the first girl I hadn’t cheated on and was working graves in a production plant, making pipe-duct, over one of the coldest winters in my life. She was sleeping with our roommate, and I was fully aware of it because I would come home at 6 AM to step over their sleeping bodies where they had collapsed the night before, drunk and in various states of undress. Every night at work, I contemplated suicide and how I could make it look like a work accident.

Then she left.

Those three words make it seem cut and dry, but it was anything BUT that; she moved home, a state away, one night when I was working, and I found out when I got home. A week later, she called me, told me she wanted to come back and I drove overnight to get her, and then overnight to bring her back with me — that was the last time that car drove, too. A week later, she left again, with our roommate in tow, and never came back.

I quit my job the night before she left by pulling a no-call-no-show; I had a job flipping burgers lined up, in case of emergencies, and I needed a change. I stepped over her and our roommate one last time to hop on a bus to go to work, and when I came home, I was expecting my apartment to be empty, and I was going to work up the balls to kill myself.

It wasn’t; when I walked in, my apartment was full of my friends — I had given a few of them keys, so they let themselves in — and had food waiting for me. Marvel vs. Capcom 2 was on my TV, and I was quickly shuffled, against my will, into the rotation. We played until far later than we should have, and when everyone left, one of my really good — and currently homeless — friends pulled up a pillow on my couch.

“I’m not leaving until you’re okay,” he said, and he didn’t until well after I was. My apartment went from being a place where I didn’t feel safe or welcome to a place where I knew that any time I could find someone willing to kick my ass at Bloody Roar 4 until I begged them to let me do the same to them in Midnight Club 2. When I needed a room mate, a guy from my D&D group moved in, and when he left, the DM took his place.

In the darkest time in my existence, gamers saved my life.

  1. shootthecore reblogged this from gamessavedmylife
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  9. psyniac reblogged this from gamessavedmylife and added:
    big “fuck you”...friends are reading this who haven’t given
  10. repetitiouspunchline reblogged this from bampowsmash and added:
    Why don’t I have more friends like this ;_;
  11. bampowsmash reblogged this from gamessavedmylife and added:
    Wowie zowie what...story. Games are goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood.
  12. gamessavedmylife posted this