#okay got that out of my system
‘Love’ was this word in your brain kind of synonymous with ‘mutually assured destruction’. It was the excuse your mother gave for why you were meant to fall asleep to the sound of her screaming and crying most nights, the thuds and breaking glass, your suitcase always packed and your mind running escape plans.
Romance isn’t something you ever really felt comfortable with, despite a persistent low-humming loneliness and a soppy heart. You felt like there was theoretically someone out there, but they seemed like they’d have to be such a weirdly specific bundle of things - and even if you found them you’d started to hate yourself so much you couldn’t imagine them ever reciprocating. You stop even considering it, I guess. Years ago.
Then.. You meet this person. And you get this weird pull in your gut, like the video game UI signalling to the player they’re on the right path. But your brain is on edge and your life is in pieces and you misread their sincerity as everything /but/ that, and it almost takes too long to see who they really are. You have to salvage your friendship from the mess that unfolded.
But things work out. Better than that, even. Maybe the bad stuff even ended up bringing you closer together. Life is weird.
You decide to get on a plane for the first time, fly halfway around the world. Everything feels strange and kind of magic (but goofy and awkward and human) and you feel alive for the first time in years.
So you get to have your first kiss at 26, with someone who understands. And you fall asleep night after night all limbs tangled, their face gently illuminated by the yellow glow of their Super Mario lamp, and feel this completely different type of happiness
and awe
at someone else’s existence.
I know, life doesn’t have happy endings. Two people don’t meet and fall in love and.. that’s that, that’s the whole thing sorted, everything will be grand and good forever. There’ll be bills and crappy dayjobs and all the costs of travel and paperwork and health issues and family stuff and countless other things that might go wrong, and things we both already deal with, and not to mention the world is a mess right now, too. But knowing this amazing person would be by your side through all of that makes it feel worthwhile, gives it direction and purpose and warmth like there wasn’t before.
And my brain still wants to catastrophize – what if? All these ways caring about someone might hurt. All these ways I’ve seen other people get hurt. But when someone makes your life so much richer and calmer with their presence, and inspires you to want to try harder and be better and kinder, because you see how hard they work and how much of their heart they put into their creative work and their relationships? When someone gives you those moments where you can’t help but grin like a huge dork just at the sight of their beautiful face? Those worries melt away. There’s no other choice.
~
To echo something @destiny-smasher said: this all happened because we played this little French video game with these two characters we fell in love with and related with, and a dissatisfying ending that kept us creating fan content afterwards.
That story pushed me to realise you can’t live your life worrying about the future, trying to second guess what might go wrong, being too scared to embrace the present.
That story, and it’s fandom, got me through one of the lowest points of my life.
That story brought me and @destiny-smashertogether.
I don’t think there’s a way to sufficiently say thank you for that. To dontnod. To any of you.
But, thank you.
