It's just appreciation for Sky: Children of the Light, God of War (2018), Gris and for all the other good distractions that helped me survive, reflections on self-worth, life and why does it seem like nature has so much joy despite so much sorrow
Sky: Children of the Light means a lot to me and for reasons known to the abyss that has been my heart for the last 2 years
3 years ago, I suddenly fell into the most horrific depersonalization/derealization episode ever, and it took everything that I thought made value of my person to me, it took my personality, my knowledge, my senses, my perception of life and reality and of myself, my memories and the meanings I have always assigned unconsciously to myself and everything to life.
It's like I was snuffed out like a candle and suddenly all I knew then was darkness and the smoke that was only a vague idea of the flame that was me, and that insistent force that kept drowning me while I was awake.
The Bible called it "The light of my eyes got put out"
I struggled to stay afloat, it hurt to lie down, it hurt to live, it hurt to exist. It was a nightmare I couldn't sleep off or wake up from.
I couldn't read a page without the existential dread that followed about how books worked, and reading was my joy and solace in my hardest times before dpdr so I couldn't escape the pain. Art provided a temporary and weak distraction when it was my language and fun and joy too. I felt like a flame struggling to stay kindling.
Only a few things back then gave me comfort and relief:
1. The 2018 God of War game, somehow the game gave me a loop-hole in my brain to enjoy a story and read lore and world details without the existential crises about everything making it all. I stayed up late a lot playing it and I could have played more if my brother's PS4 could handle the heat as I couldn't sleep properly or lay on my bed without feeling extreme pain and alienation in my body that I couldn't understand.
2. Another thing that helped ease the pain was a cool guy called Alex Parda, also known as Alex1leg. The cheerfulness and simplicity and honestly when he got serious and talked about how his cancer was hard all gave me solace. Despite how his old pain and my existing pain back then being worlds apart, I found hope in the way he lived after healing from his cancer, like I could find gladness like that again. I owe to his openess and cheerful attitude and love for life the days I could stand everything.
3. Animal documentaries and videos, because animals always live in the present and on instinct, what was shown or said about the animal in the video or the documentary was going to be happening now and over and over in the same principal, and that provided my dpdr brain with a predictability that soothed its fear of a world full of abstract ideas and machinations.
4. Bluey. I never thought that I would develop a liking to this show as an adult, not because I thought it was for kids, but because I didn't think it was for me. But then theOdd1sout talked about it in a video and I wondered if I should give it a look. The formula of short episodes that have a self-contained story with a moral conclusion comforted me because I felt like my brain is working around a simple logical idea without the mental strain, because I used to like working on heavy logical ideas, but my half-eaten dpdr brain had none of the life in it to do that back then. The soft colors and simple joy of the characters and the genuine kindness in the small stories was all nice to watch as I lay in bed hardly able to move to brush my hair or turn to the other side without my whole body aching, like flipping myself was shifting internal and external worlds. Yep, dpdr with all its baggage came with severe depression that hurt like hell in my body somehow!!!
5. Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts. It was a very simple romance anime, not too complicated or deep or philosophical, but it was kind and sweet and genuine, the best combo for my half-brain. I don't think I could have enjoyed it outside my illness because it isn't my usual type of story but it was a very nice anime, so much that I read the whole manga six months later after finishing the anime. I rarely go back to stories I finished except if they were exceptional to me, like AtLA, Death Note, SpyxFamily and this cute anime that was a sweet thing in times of hardship.
All of these were very nice and easy to approach when I had a hard time wrapping my mind around the fog of what was going on in my head. I really needed a therapist back then but the lady I went to,. despite being a total sweetheart, couldn't help me and she pointed me to a new therapist. I had a very hard time collecting up the strength to go to therapy after her recommendation, it took me a year because I couldn't put to words to what I felt, my family was so messy about my mental illness and I felt too exhausted to leave my bed let alone get dressed and go out and meet a new therapist.
The bad thing about not having help is how the illness took wild turns even when it was improving on a weekly basis (improving is an overstatement, more like being imprisoned in a motley cell with only a slow once a week drip from a broken pipe as my source of water and sustenance).
During my dpdr, I had a very weird delirious episode that left me really shaken and I had started to have very insistent thoughts that gave me extreme urge to hurt myself. The strain of the illness was too much and I was finally pushed to go to the therapist, because my safety could be compromised and I couldn't handle that.
He gave me antidepressant prescription beside psychotherapy and I am grateful everyday for the existence of antidepressants because they healed a lot of the physical and emotional pains.
But before the medications started to work, before I continued the actual psychotherapy because I went pretty down with the physical exhaustion after the first session, I was in a very low point in my life and I barely had the physical energy to do what's right and go to therapy.
And then I found Sky: Children of the Light.
I was looking for an mmorpg mobile game that could fill the hole left by Order and Chaos Online and I found Sky, so I downloaded the game and ventured in.
It was a little dream between my hands.
When I was playing Sky, I remembered asking God to take me to Heaven for a little bit of solace and comfort from the pain, and most of Sky's world was how I pictured Heaven, it was so beautiful ❤️❤️❤️
Sky's world that felt like a painting in a studio Ghibli film, the music, the simple quest lines, the deep quest lines, exploring the world to find hidden winged light and maps and spirits in a leisurely paced adventure, the FLYING and the simplicity but rich beauty of it all engulfed me in a warm hug.
The crowded events, when I learned about those from the veteran who "adopted" me hehe, provided a fun distraction from the memories of the delirious episode and the slump that I was in.
That world returned to me a sense of wonder that I thought that I lost in the dark.
And that's why when people complain about somethings like fomo in Sky, I never got it because I loved and enjoyed Sky for other reasons. I eventually rode the fomo train for a long time after haha but I can't hate Sky. It has been slow now that anything new to explore I have to wait for now but it has been a beautiful journey.
Sky got me thinking about Studio Ghibli, and nature on general.
I went through a period when seeing anything that looks like an innocent baby except babies themselves (human or animal) made me cry so hard in sadness. I guess it was because I felt so violated that I didn't think I could return to a world where I wasn't this broken anymore.
But why did baby humans and animals not give me the same feeling? Why didn't Sky give me that despite being a child's dream world? Why didn't the studio Ghibli movies make me feel like that? (Well, in the Ghibli ones I cried because they reminded me of simpler days in my life before the illness but anyway) why did this calm cute capybara who looked serious but content not make me feel sad?
And the answer lied in nature
before I had dpdr, there was a patch of green land beside the river that I loved to visit, once I got I'll someone burned the whole thing to the ground. I was so sad that it happened.
A year later, that place was so new and beautiful, like nothing ever happened to it, and it hits me now how nature looks so new and child-like despite sustaining a lot of pain daily.
This calmness in life that one finds in nature and children amazed me, how it a world full of pain could these things exist in spite of it, not because the pain doesn't exist.
looking at trees and seeing the light and shadow play on them, making it a marble of different shades of green, it made me see my sadness on it but it soothed it greatly.
It's like the light hugged the shadow, it didn't deny it and it allowed it to sob in its arms.
And that's life all around us, in nature the plants didn't undo the destruction, but grew on top of it and despite it happening.
And I understood why Sky felt soothing, why studio Ghibli felt nice, why Mr Capybara felt kind. All looked like they acknowledged a world full of hurting and brokeness and took it on with the life inside them however big or small it was.
Sky is life returning to a post-apocalyptic land, softly, slowly, silently, but steady and hopeful.
No wonder a piece of art like Gris felt so comforting to me. The game mirrored the pain and joy, how both went hand in hand. I had known the game for a while but never played it, didn't know it would be a soothing balm in time of pain and grief like the time I was in.
I don't know, I just wanted to tell somebody about it all. I planned to talk about other things but it's late and now I am calm enough to sleep.
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