Making Fantasy my Reality

B’Rock discusses how Final Fantasy helped keep them stable in a family that suffered from a variety of mental disabilities.

Mental disease is strange, and when you grow up in a household where everyone is crazy its tricky to see anyone having a problem. Being the youngest I never saw any of my family members as crazy, just different. I never knew of a time when my house wasn’t overloaded with junk. I didn’t understand what a hoarder was. I never knew how much alcohol was okay for a grown woman to drink and that you couldn’t just attribute it to the fact that she’s Irish. I didn’t know what it meant to be bipolar. I didn’t know what social disorder was, or why my brother had to be home-schooled. I didn’t know what schizophrenia really meant, or how it makes you lose your sister.

What I did know was how much I loved Final Fantasy.

Making friends was hard. People always made me uneasy, or more accurately I made them uneasy. I didn’t know how to engage or make friends since my only models were a family full of neurotics with their own host of problems. But when I wanted to escape I would run home, go to the basement, and find myself in front of the PS1 I bought for $30 in change. I played FFVIII and was awful at it. I didn’t understand the junction system (who the hell did? much less a 9 year old) but was desperate to leave. To escape, to go somewhere where the strange and bizarre was standard. Where my fantasy WAS reality.

I stole a copy of FFVII, and got FFIX as a birthday gift. Every game would keep me company, and offer more then the world around me really could. I don’t think I could have survived growing up if I didn’t have a world to escape to. I was young, a Jew, a sexually confused one at that, that lived in a tiny town that was quick to remind me of my differences. I used to fantasize about summoning Ifrit and Shiva blowing away my enemies or mumbling “Aero 2” every time I glanced at how dirty the house was. I always would replace one character in every Final Fantasy game with my own name to embrace the fantasy entirely. FFVII I was Vincent, FFVIII I was Zell, FFIX I was Vivi.

I think having those stories kept me from creating fantasies in my head. Delusions that most likely would have occupied those spaces instead of a harmless video game.

I think these games kept me sane, when the world around me spiraled.

I’m 21 now, traveling a lot. Still running I suppose, but chasing real fantasies not just ones that were given to me by storytellers. Mental disorders are higher with those who have family histories, but there is plenty of research saying that it is stronger and more likely in those who lack outlets, or don’t willfully resist them. My sister lost the will, and took her life three months ago. I think that shock, snapped my family to the reality they are not part of. We are sending my mother to rehab and addressing all of our issues.

I finally got my brother to come out of his shell and meet my friends.

I feel like a rock now, and being a gamer did that. Who would’ve thought?  

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