What began as nostalgia became something much more worthy of my time and attention.
Last time I wanted to escape reality for a while, I logged onto Steam and Final Fantasy X was on sale for like, $12.
I remember playing parts of FFX on my ship, back in 2002 — before the Iraq War — and I remember I really enjoyed it… but for one reason or another, I don’t think I ever finished it.
So I decided to give it another go.
Within the first few hours of the game, I was hooked. I was completely engrossed in the storyline, in love with the characters, engaged in the battles… I was starting to feel exactly the way I felt the first time I played the game… before I ever had any debilitating PTSD symptoms.
I can still remember, clearly, what it felt like to play the game on my ship, after hours, in uniform, with no one in my shop but me… a fresh pot of coffee on, and a full pack of cigarettes within reach… and no one to bother me and nothing to do but just enjoy the moment.
And as I got back into the game, today, more than twenty years later…
I don’t know if I can fully describe what it felt like. It was like, I don’t think I’m allowed to feel this relaxed, this carefree, this “in love” with playing a good game, enjoying the story, loving the characters…
It’s not right that I’m able to have such a positive experience today. It doesn’t fit my worldview.
One of the things I loved about role-playing games when I was growing up is there’s always a struggle. The party always has a really big challenge that they have to overcome. And the main character, more often than not, has serious self-doubt, and a horrible, dark, troubled past.
When I was a teenager, and even into my early twenties, that seemed romantic somehow.
Like, how noble would it be, to have gone through some horrible ordeal, and now you have to learn how to overcome it so you can vanquish your opponent, save the world, and get the girl?
(You always have to get the girl… that’s like the most important part of the whole story right there.)
But being as I’m now approaching 50… and I have gone through a horrible ordeal… even though I am learning to overcome it…
Yeah, it’s not romantic, anymore. It’s just… horrible.
But the cool thing about art (and a good video game is art) is it can show us things about ourselves that, at first we don’t want to see. It can peel back the layers and bring us face-to-face with the parts of ourselves we’ve been trying to avoid…
And if it’s really good art, it can show us how to take the shattered pieces of our life, and start to put them back together, into something that resembles an integrated whole.
As I played through FFX this time around, getting deeper into the story, and increasingly more attached to the characters (and the eventual outcome)… something stirred inside me.
I kept running into those memories of me, on my ship; in uniform; after the workday had ended; playing a simple video game; enjoying my life…
And then I started having memories from just one year later, of being constantly afraid; waking up each morning convinced everyone on the ship was going to die; coming home from the Gulf, convinced that everyone on the ship deserved to die…
And it got to where I couldn’t hold both memories in my mind at the same time…
And for the first time since my ship entered the Gulf in early 2003… the happy memories were starting to win.
Somehow, finishing FFX became analagous to me “finishing” the steps I’ve been taking in therapy, to bridge the gap between pre-PTSD, and post-PTSD.
I honestly became obsessed with finishing the game.
At so many pivotal points, I tensed up, as the experience brought to my mind so many of the emotions I felt when we were out to sea… and I could feel myself fighting against the feelings, the memories, and the overpowering fear.
I wasn’t just reacting to the game — I was reliving the feelings I’d had on deployment, and watching myself work through those feelings in real time.
It sounds silly to say that I got all this out of a game. And yet, when the final battle was over, and the good guys had won, and the story came to a powerful close… I felt things I haven’t been able to let myself feel in over two decades.
I feel what it was like, to not be controlled by my trauma. I feel what it was like before I went to war. Before I lost myself to fear and horror.
In this moment, I feel good.
And I’m not worried about what’s going to happen in my life next. I’m not waiting for the shoe to drop. I’m not anticipating some horrible, miserable fate. I’m not expecting to fail at everything, or to suffer forever.
Mind you, this is only a moment. But to someone who’s lived so long with so much… even a moment like this feels like a miracle.
I almost don’t know what to do, now.
I don’t think that I’m “cured.” I don’t think severe trauma, or depression, or serious anxiety, are things that ever completely go away. But in this moment, I am not “under their control.”
And that’s significant, in and of itself. Because for years, my programming has been, “This is never going to change, and I’ll never get away from it.”
But for 60 hours or so, playing FFX, I did get away from it. And I don’t know, but it’s like, somehow, that put a chink in the armor… and now… maybe my trauma doesn’t have as strong of a grip on me, as it used to?
It is still there. And it is still painful to look at it, too closely.
And honestly: my time in the mental hospital, and in residential treatment, and intensive outpatient, has taught me a lot about how to cope with my trauma and how to reframe it and put it in a different context.
But FFX managed to do something that even the hospital never could: It reminded me, for those 60 hours, that there was a “me” before I got PTSD… and that version of me is still alive and kicking, somewhere deep inside… somewhere my trauma never reached…
And maybe, I can’t ever completely get rid of the painful memories. But maybe this is evidence that the painful memories aren’t the only thing driving the bus, anymore.
(I may need to play FFXII through FFXVI now, to have a larger data pool to draw from…)