After the EndSARS protests —we were basically demanding national police reform, which would reduce and hopefully stop the numerous unsanctioned killings by law enforcement officials, sadly the same law enforcement officials ended up killing more of us in the protests anyway— were done, everyone seemed to move on and went back to trying to live their lives, I also did the same. During the protests, I had multiple panic attack episodes and had anxiety almost daily after they were done. A coworker of mine was killed and that really did a number on me, I almost lost it, I’m glad I got professional help to help with the panic attacks and anxiety. What I didn’t know was that it was going to get much worse, because not long after that I fell into depression.
To be honest to date, I’ve not been keen on leaving my house regularly since October because I know that we actually lost that battle. The protests didn’t work, SARS (SWAT as they’re called now) and the police were still out there doing as they like, I still see videos and threads on Twitter. I have this deep-seated fear that if for some reason I drive my car out for a certain amount of time that I’ll get pulled over and get shot at. As you can imagine, it’s not a really fun situation to be in, however, I find ways to make life enjoyable though.
Anyone who knows me well knows that games are my escape, I play them a lot more when I’m sad or moody and don’t want to talk to anyone. So as I did in the past I tried to distract myself by playing games, but nothing interested me. All the games I had were either too easy, too boring, too repetitive, treated me like a messager who had a huge list of tasks to do. Basically, I wasn’t having it and I gave up. I settled for watching Youtube videos instead. On some random day, this video got recommended to me by the Youtube algorithm, and I felt, what harm would it do, it’s not like I had better things to do or watch. I watched an hour of gameplay and was intrigued. I had played Dark Souls and Sekiro 5 years ago and 2 years ago respectively but they never clicked with me.
When I played Dark Souls, the first place I went to was the graveyard and I died to those unnecessarily overpowered skeletons more times than I can remember. Then I foolishly aggroed the guy by the bonfire in Firelink Shrine and well, let’s just say that save file was completely unplayable because he killed me immediately I spawned. So, I started a new game and I got to Undead Burg. I was never able to get to the Taurus demon because all the regular enemies kept wiping the floor with my ass. At that point, I was done with the game and left it to play something else.
When I played Sekiro, I died more times to that useless Ogre more times than I could count, IT WAS SOOOO ANNOYING. I eventually managed to beat him, and it felt so relieving, unfortunately, the save file got corrupted when someone I live with shook the plug of the console which turned off the game while I was playing it —that said; ALWAYS USE 3 PIN PLUGS FOR YOUR GAME CONSOLE. I tried to beat him again but after 10 or so tries, I gave up. I thought, yeah these kinds of games are too hard for me anyway, fuck it.
Anyway, I digress, after watching the video for an hour I figured I’d try the game out. I had subscribed for PSNow some months back and saw that Bloodborne was recently added to the collection, so I figured “why not?”. Worse case, I’d hate it and dump it like the other SoulsBorne games I’d tried in the past.
I booted it up and the first thing I noticed was that it didn’t have lots of cutscenes explaining the story nor did the game give you a map or objective markers. The initial location is Central Yharnam, and Oh My God, I spent a week trying to kill the mob, I kept dying because I always mistimed an attack or wasn’t watching my back or I just sucked ass. I wanted to give up because I felt the game would be relatively easy at the beginning, giving me a few enemies to fight before throwing a horde of enemies at me. It was this quote from Gerhman that kept me going: “Just go out and kill a few beasts. It’s for your own good. You know, it’s just what hunters do! You’ll get used to it…”
So with renewed courage, I set out again and I eventually cleared it and then in my mind, I was like “okay, so where do I go next?”. I’d regularly spend moments trying to orient myself. I made my way to my first boss fight: Cleric Beast, and eventually to one of the most hated bosses of every new Bloodborne player, Father Gascoigne (papa G as I like to call him), I almost gave up again. This guy is tough as nails
Apparently, he and the Ogre is Sekiro are what the SoulsBorne community calls a Skill Check Boss. The game puts this huge wall in front of you and forces you to use all the skills it’s been trying to teach you to know if you can actually beat the rest of the game. Because the game gets harder, WAYYYYY HARDER. And seemingly enough there aren’t many skill checks after the first one, or rather others are optional.
As I continued playing, I got sucked into the world and the lore, I found myself watching a lot of lore videos and joined the r/bloodborne subreddit.
Now you may be asking “so how the hell did Bloodborne save me?”.
Lol, I could write about this game all day without getting to the point 🥲 😂. I could also talk about it for hours debating lore, comparing each weapons meta, etc.
Anyway, In these kinds of games (SoulsBorne games), your character will die, but that dying isn’t bad, dying is part of the game, and that’s something I never really considered when I played Dark Souls and Sekiro. Though punishing as the game is, dying sucks ass, at the same time dying isn’t a failure, dying is only a temporary setback, and that you are MEANT to die. In other games you’d get a “GAME OVER” screen, instead Bloodborne tells you “YOU DIED” and respawns you back at the nearest lamp. This is because in the game your character is trapped in a dream and can’t wake up till the person/entity causing the nightmare has been slain.
I realised this when I heard this quote from Djura “You still dream I should think? Then come as often as you like, I’ll show you another death.” Hence, dying is part of the game cycle.
But how does that relate to real-life though? I started seeing parallels with how the game played out and how life is sometimes.
In Bloodborne:
1. You meet an enemy
2. You die
3. You learn why you died (or not, lol)
4. You try again
5. You die again
.
.
9. You may choose to level up
.
.
n. Then eventually you winIn real life:
1. You try something (maybe start a business)
2. You fail
3. You learn why you failed (or not 😂)
4. You try again
5. You fail again
.
.
9. You may choose to learn new skills
.
.
n. Then you may eventually succeedIn my own case:
1. I wasn’t satisfied with the life I had, because I was depressed and I acknowledged it early on. I wanted to have some level of control over what I was doing with my life. I also had some family stuff I needed to sort out and I was avoiding all of it.
2. I wanted a new job and I’d tried as much as I could without success. A few friends of mine had gotten remote gigs, and I thought “oh if they could do it, I can too”. Apparently, it’s never that simple. There’s a lot of background work they did that I didn’t see, there’s also a lot of luck that goes into it.
For the first part, I started asking myself the hard questions of what I actually wanted to do, and how I’d go about doing it. I started sleeping early, eating well and tidied up my personal space. My personal space needed to be fit for meditation and thinking. I also got a whiteboard and markers for my regular brainstorming activities. I also let go of people who cut me off, there was no point holding on to a friendship that could have been, and realising that I hadn’t moved on was also contributing to my depression, the way I thought about it is “friendship is a two-way street in which both people have to meet each other halfway, there’s no point in me waiting in the middle of the street if the other person isn’t going to budge”.
It’s still in progress, but I now know what I must do, I think. No one will fix my life’s problems but I and I can ask for advice from many people as much as I want but they won’t help me do the hard work of getting my shit together, it’s the same way no one can help you play the first section of Yarhagul or Cathedral Ward for you until you open the gates in both areas.
For the second part, I started applying in January. I applied to over 30 companies from the 1st of January till the 31 of February, and I got rejected by all of them. At this point, I was stressed and tired and just stopped applying. I took the whole of March off from applying to focus on levelling up and started applying again in April. I was face to face with my skill check, I’d died/been rejected over 30 times and I didn’t want to give up because I wanted to explore what this game/world had to offer. By the end of May, I had more interviews than I could fit in one day. I decided to quit my job and take June off to work on interviewing only. I got offers which I turned down because I wanted to see what was on the other side.
The weird thing about the choice I made is that it may not be the best choice, as this is also something Bloodborne teaches, is that, there’s no better choice, what matters is that you make the choice and stick by it. If you tell the girl her both her parents are dead, she kills herself. If you don’t she still dies. All the people you save will either try to kill you or kill one another, so you still need to kill them 😩. So if I say I’m going to do X and I eventually hate it I’ll take my L and move on. If it turns out to be a great choice, great for me.
Basically, if you do the same thing (in life and obviously in Bloodborne 😏) expecting a different outcome, it won’t happen. Vaas explains it better.
Vaas : Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is? Insanity is doing the exact... same fucking thing... over and over again expecting... shit to change... That. Is. Crazy. The first time somebody told me that, I dunno, I thought they were bullshitting me, so, I shot him. The thing is... He was right. And then I started seeing, everywhere I looked, everywhere I looked all these fucking pricks, everywhere I looked, doing the exact same fucking thing... over and over and over and over again thinking 'this time is gonna be different' no, no, no please... This time is gonna be different, I'm sorry, I don't like... The way...[Punches crate aside violently. His agitation towards the player character is visibly growing]Vaas : ... you are looking at me... Okay, Do you have a fucking problem in your head, do you think I am bullshitting you, do you think I am lying? Fuck you! Okay? Fuck you!... It's okay, man. I'm gonna chill, hermano. I'm gonna chill... The thing is... Alright, the thing is I killed you once already... and it's not like I am fucking crazy. It's okay... It's like water under the bridge. Did I ever tell you the definition... of insanity?Vaas, Far Cry 3
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2321297/characters/nm3103126
Now I approach everything in life like this. I’ll just go out and kill a few beasts. It’s for my own good anyway. You know, it’s just what hunters do! I’ll get used to it.
This post was inspired by this video I watched a while back and I’ve been meaning to document my own journey, I tried to not repeat what he said since I can totally relate to all he said.
If you’re ever in Yharnam and want to coop 🤝 or want to invade me 😈⚔️, This is my Twitter (DMs are open) and my Reddit, and I’m always on r/huntersbell helping noob hunters like myself explore Yharnam to defeat the nightmarish creatures.
I’m playing Dark Souls now though and I stream regularly on Youtube 😉
