It’s 1am. October 21 just started. It’s dark outside, but there is no storm. There is no rain, but I feel cold. There is no wind, but I can feel it rampaging anyway. I can hear it in my head.
My own personal storm.
I’m not at that cliff, but either way… I feel polarized.
I’m at the very same spot I was a year ago. I’m staring blankly at this screen, as I write what I experienced that day.
I feel polarized. I’ve always felt polarized.
I watched Chloe crumble to dust and rise again as a different person. A better person. The person she used to be was now inside her; latent, hidden, too affraid to come out to be hurt by reality. I’ve seen Chloe polarized.
I watched Max try. Again and again. I saw her try, fail, repeat. I saw her fighting her own demons, too stubborn to accept fate. I watched Max selflessly give up herself or selfishly not. I saw Max polarized.
Some people never feel it. Some people are always confident in their decisions. In their words. In their fate. They never experienced the duality, the conflict, the strange situation of having two opposite voices in the back of their heads, questioning each other. Are we just? Or unjust? Are we doing good because we feel it or because we think it is expected? Are we doing good at all? Or are we selfishly telling ourselves a pretty tale?
Some people never feel polarized.
But I did. And I still do.
Life is Strange showed up in a very, very strange moment of my life. I judged it. I dismissed it. I treated it as a game. And as a game, I played it.
And unlike any other experience, it showed me I was so very, very wrong. About people. About relationships. About the world itself.
Life is Strange broke me. Life is Strange made me crumble to dust and rise again. Not painless. Not whole. Not unharmed.
But different.
It showed me how heavy words can be; how all decisions have consequences we can’t measure at the moment we take them. It showed me all people have masks, and that is not always a bad thing. It showed me all people are polarized.
Life is Strange is the only reason I found the most selfless, caring group of people I’ve ever met in my life. A place I can call “home”, even if it physically doesn’t exist. My own personal Blackwell Bigfoots; pushing together, always there, even if the odds rise against us like a storm.
It showed me to find beauty in chaos. And that, is a virtue.
A year ago, I saw myself polarized.
Thank you.
Thank you for Life is Strange.
October 20, 2015 - October 20, 2016
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