LogFAQs > #958743340

Kingdom Hearts is a series I used to love. It came out right after I turned 12, and I followed it for years. I played every game as they released, buying a PSP primarily for Birth by Sleep. People say the series has a story that's impossible to follow, but it's really not if you just play all the games. Granted, thats easier said than done considering the series jumped around so damn much. The first sequel (which isn't even called KH2) was on the GBA lol.

I beat Dream Drop Distance for 3DS and liked it, it was a setup for the then-announced KH3 and I was curious how stupidly off the rails the story would continue to get. During the 7 year gap between DDD and KH3, I met someone. She was really into Kingdom Hearts, among many of my other interests. We met at work, and she would attend Smash Bros tournaments. She was relatively good (but I still wrecked her lol).

I've never met someone before or since whom I just so naturally clicked with. This goes beyond games and interests, we had a similar sense of humor and she understood all my stupid jokes, we got along great, and quickly grew very close. She lit a fire in me that acted as my source of strength during troubled times. Frankly, she was a complete mess, but they say love is blind, and I wanted to be there for her when the rest of the world wouldnt.

In 2017, we moved in together. Primarily because she was getting kicked out of her current residence (like I said, her life was a mess) and she didn't have anywhere to go. Aside from family, I never lived with anyone else before, although I was looking for a new place at the time. I hesitated, but eventually signed a lease with her.

Actually living with her wasn't easy however, she had a lot of drama, suicidal tendencies, and communication issues. I continued to deal with her through it, because I cared about her so fucking much, but in the end, it all fell apart. This was inevitable honestly, but it still utterly broke me. I made the incredibly stupid mistake of placing my value and self-worth with her. If she was happy, I was happy, and I would do everything in my power to make her happy, my needs be damned. When we split, I didn't know what to do with myself. I was crushed and couldn't figure out how to pull myself up because my source of strength, her, was gone.

This was during the 2nd half of 2017. I started living alone, which as a whole I much prefer, but I was horrendously suicidal and depressed. With no one to check my actions but myself, I started smoking weed. Heavily. They say one issue with weed is that it leaves you unmotivated, that it makes you content with boredom and you do nothing. Considering how much I wanted to kill myself, I think "doing nothing" was one of the healthiest things I could do at the time.

To this day I'm a functional stoner. I've smoked weed near daily over the past 4 years. The impacts of that event still haunt me. Truthfully I feel embarrassed and ashamed about the whole thing, how someone I only knew for a year could cause the sort of damage that lasts over four times as long, but I also feel it's a testament to how much I cared. She changed my life.

Things ended on very bad terms between us, and it's really the lack of closure that kills me. If we simply weren't on speaking terms it'd be one thing, but the fact that someone I care so deeply about thinks so negatively of me just....breaks my heart.

I've moved on in many ways, pulled myself out of depression as much as I could, found some of the joy in my hobbies again, but the scars remain and very well may stick with me for the rest of my life. It was an experience in grief, and even though I've gone through the stages and accepted the reality of it, that doesn't mean it no longer hurts. I started going by my last name not long after the whole ordeal, because I haven't felt like myself in a very long time.

That got much lengthier than I intended, but maybe now you can understand how the love of a video game series I treasured for over a decade can vanish in a puff of smoke. I associated her with Kingdom Hearts, and in 2017 during the leadup to KH3, the sight of anything from the series would cause a bolt of sorrow to pierce me. KH3 was a game I looked forward to for many years, you can even find the deluxe edition sitting on my shelf alongside the rest of the franchise, but I know nothing about it, and I can't bring myself to play it, nor do I really want to.

For this reason, I didn't really care if Sora made it into smash, despite being one of my top picks during the Smash 4 era. I wrote him off as a never ever, assuming Disney would never play ball, but Sakurai works his magic as usual. I tried to avoid spoilers, but when I searched for the direct this morning, the title had already been updated to include his name lol. My initial reaction was a mere "oh, well, ok....."

I began watching the trailer anyways, and unexpectedly I felt moved. The beginning of the KH theme gave me chills, and I couldn't keep the smile from my face when Sora appeared from the keyhole. It helps that it's KH1 Sora, since I still fondly think of that game, and it came out during a time long before adulthood fucked my shit up.

My feelings shifted once I saw him in-game, standing next to Mario. Naturally I remembered her, and I remembered the days we would play Smash together. I wonder what she thought. Was she excited? Did she care at all?

The cruel reality is I will never know. My lack of closure was brought up full force, and I broke down. I started crying, the messy crying where your nose is runny and the pain leaks out as ugly moans. There's still a deep sadness rooted in the pits of my soul, and that trailer just dug it out into the open, overwhelming me.

My entire day has been shot, but organizing my thoughts like this helped, and the extremely low-key initial excitement of the trailer showed me that I still do care for the series in some way, deep down. While not anytime soon, perhaps I will play KH3 afterall one of these days. I feel like today has pushed me forward one step. A painful, uncomfortable step, but a step none-the-less. Ultimately I think it's a good thing, but I'd trade this progress in a heartbeat to replace Sora with Reimu Hakurei lol.

---

Not changing this sig until 250 people ask.
Counter-236