I’ve only been on Twitch for a month; as someone who doesn’t know much about gaming, I usually hang out in Just Chatting and watch podcasts, or the occasional chess stream. I first stumbled onto the platform through Dr. K’s videos, and Reckful’s six-part saga was, in a sense, my introduction to Twitch. Once I familiarized myself with the platform and its faces, I picked up on three things: one, Reckful was a legendary figure as one of the founders of the genre, two, he was generally considered a nice person, and three, his depression was profound, and a secret to no one.
I was on Twitch when the news of his passing started to circulate. I was watching as streamers everywhere would get the notification, open the tweet, start to cry, and either log off or talk about how much he meant to them. There wasn’t a single person that day that didn’t have something to say. I watched as all of the chapels on WoW, across every server, started to fill with players kneeling in memoriam, staying still for hours as the rooms got so full all you could see was a mass of usernames and condolences. It sent ripples across the community that reached far beyond the confines of Twitch, and now, almost three days later, I’m still walking around with a hole in my chest – I haven’t been this affected by the death of a public figure since Bowie, and even then, the loss was of a cultural icon, not of someone who only made it 31 years before succumbing to the burden of existence in a life full of suffering.
One of the worst things about this loss is that no one was surprised when it happened. Devastated, yes, but not surprised. Reckful was vocal about the pain he was in. He was vocal about the attempts he had been making, throughout his life, to try and feel less alone. His grief, at times, was visceral, and from what I can tell, his friends supported him in every way they could, but no one is superhuman. The worst part is: I get it, man. I’ve grown a lot this year, and I’ve learned what it can mean to be stuck in a view of the world so hellish, things you never would have imagined thinking start to become reasonable options. But I managed to claw my way out, with the help of a few good friends and god-given SSRIs, coming out the other side with a hell of a lot more empathy than I did going in for other people in pain. I’m lucky to have had those people around me, and it’s heartbreaking that Reckful couldn’t connect to the people he had – it isn’t always that easy to connect, and I understand what he went through. And I hate that he’s gone, because he was trying, but it isn’t always easy, and it doesn’t always work.
I work for the Crisis Text Line/Kids Help Phone, and through that work, I have the privilege of talking to dozens of people a month about the problems in their lives that they feel no one else has the time, or the desire, to talk to them about. I try my best to use the empathy I’ve gained as a goddamn sword against the debilitating weapons of loneliness, and to connect to every goddamn human I can in a way that can leave them feeling stronger and less alone. If you’re in pain, I will run through goddamn walls to find a way to help you. In the words of Dr. K this Friday: don’t worry alone, and don’t die alone.
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