Everyone has their coping mechanism. Some choose therapy, alchohol, cigarettes, self harm, friends, love, optimism, work. Coping mechanisms are everywhere and anything, and for me, it’s Karma. Karma has been an integral part of my well being, and ultimately my survival of depression. I think it’s exotic that someone can take their imagination, this limitless, boundless string of thoughts so pure to humans, and work it into a digital platform for millions of people to experience, enjoy, and even build on top of what has already been established. It’s truly a beautiful thing that I take pride in being able to interact with, because there is nothing else so immersive and distracting from real life that can also solve your problems for you in a behind the scenes way I love Karma. But how did I get here? How did such a young form of entertainment become the very thing that helped me survive my own insecurities and thoughts becoming the bullet that could possibly shoot out of that Glock? Born in Detroit in the bathtub of my house(humble beginnings, I know), I was your average 5 year old boy. I wore my power ranger underwear backwards because I didn’t understand why the green and red ranger had to be where I couldn’t see them, I rode my Labrador Angel like a horse, I was die hard for my toys, and I didn’t understand the concept of prolonged sadness, greed, depression, anxiety, or anything like that. My family owned the original Playstation, this gray box with controllers that didn’t have joysticks and played my favorite game – Spyro: A Dragon’s Tale. Oh how I loved playing with Karma when no one was around and I got out of pre-school. Spyro was this amazing adventure game that was light hearted and challenging at the same time, and I loved every bit of it. Until that is…I discovered my dad playing the first Diablo. I was 5 years old. Diablo was rated M for Mature audiences. My mom didn’t know I knew how to play it when dad wasn’t home. [chuckles] Oh man was that one literal hell of a game. At 5 years old, I successfully beat Diablo with the Rogue, Sorcerer, and Warrior, honing my PC skills and bragging to my dad that I was better than him at the game he bought. I replayed the game at least 5 times before my mom found out it was rated M, banning me from the computer and wondering why my dad even let me play it for as long as I did. Diablo and Spyro were my childhood next to Pokemon Yellow and Sapphire, which my best friend Ryan constantly brought over and played with me when we’d see each other. It was a good life until I accidentally burned my house down in 2000. Part of my growing up was this hypersense of imagination and creating going on in my head. When I wasn’t in school, I was home playing by myself or with Eric from across the street, enjoying made up stories of Power Rangers versus Zed and other monsters, among other things. I felt so at home with coming up with stories and acting them out, I wanted to be everything and anything. At 5 years old though, they don’t tell you that with imagination can come dangers if you take it too far, and thats exactly what I did sitting in the neighbors yard. I wanted to be a magician. I wanted to pull flowers and rabbits out of hats and shoot fireballs from my hands. Fireballs… I remember standing up, walking up the stairs into the porch, fixated on taming fire and bringing amazement to people that I had this supernatural power. What caught my eye when I walked through the front door were the candles sitting on the coffee table next to the couch, and Madeline(our cat) running around in the heat of a chase after something. I walked over to the candles, wondering how I’d tame. Oh, hello tissues, you seem like a prime culprit to be lit on fire and played with. Swinging around the tissues with delusions of grandeur as they were on fire, I was ready to be a magician, I wanted the crowds to cheer me on and for people to be amazed, but suddenly my hands began to hurt as the fire climbed up the tissues, creeping ever closer to my hands. I quickly threw the tissues into the garbage can, looking into the metal watermelon colored abyss and seeing a glowing flame grow. At 5, I didn’t have the attention nor the discretion to care about fire lighting all of the other materials in the trashcan, all I could think about now was the smell of the parmsean chicken my mom was making in the kitchen. It smelled amazing, and I suggest if any of you reading this ever venture to my mom’s with me, you shall experience tastebudgasms. As I sat down, my dad talked, my sister walked to the bathroom, and my mom was just setting the table. As soon as she set the tray of parmesan chicken down, my dad stood up, sniffing the air like Angel did all the time. He left the kitchen, and in a split second rushed back telling us that we needed to get out that “the house is on fire!”. You know, at 5 years old, they don’t tell you that accidents can happen, that you’re only human and that you don’t know enough to be responsible for some of the actions you commit. They don’t tell you that if you make a mistake that it’s okay, that you can tell people and it will be alright. They don’t tell you that no matter what you do, mommy and daddy and sissy won’t hate you for what you did. I sat on the concrete porch of the neighbors Ashley & Amber and lied to everyone out of fear of being condemned for what I did, scared out of my mind that I would be punished eternally for destroying everything, telling them that it must have been Madeline running around chasing a mouse, and that she just happened to knock a candle down, sending the house into a fiery blaze. At 5 years old, they don’t prepare you for depression because it shouldn’t exist in a 5 year old. But it started there. And still thrives. From then on, I felt responsible for my parents divorce, feeling that me destroying the house in a fire set their love for each other on fire. Crying for days on end because I didn’t get to see Dad anymore. I didn’t feel loved. I felt like I was a monster. That’s the second source of my depression. But throughout everything that had happened, there was always a game to play. Super Smash Bros, Zelda, Mario Party, Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokémon, Final Fantasy 7, Gran Turismo, Gex, Spyro, Halo, Cell Damage, Project Gotham, Forza, LIFE, Nicktoons Racing and so many more. Karma became the coping mechanism of a tortured soul that wondered why everything was falling apart in the world. I must have spent years in total on reddit getting karma. I didn’t find anything else that could keep my mind off of everything that was rushing in like a flood. It felt like nothing else to play as this underdog of a hero and come out on top of the enemies who fought so valiantly to keep me at bay as I completed every challenge, every level. And no one knew. No one understood why I spent so much time isolated from the world I hated playing in the worlds I loved. No one understood how Karma became my motivation to live, how if I didn’t beat Doc Oc in Spider-Man 2 then no one else will and I couldn’t let New York fall to that block of animated polygons. Karma Became My Motivation To Live. Depression has long been a dear friend and life long enemy of mine. I have struggled so hard to not give into the final solution to temporary problems, and I can’t honestly believe I made it so far without jumping from the roof of my house. Depression feels like a level that you can’t beat when the solution is so aggravatingly simplistic in a saying but the most difficult thing to actually do, it drains your motivation to be happy away because by that time you’ve been sad for so long you’re used to it. You’re used to waking up every morning contemplating if today will be the day you die. You’re used to crying at night wondering what you did to deserve the sadness that explodes inside you. You’re used to the headaches you get from sleeping so much because you don’t want to deal with the world, you don’t want to think. Depression is like a living suicide. But that doesn’t have to be permanent. These past months, however, have been rough on me. I stress over my job, my obligations to be there for everyone who needs someone, my lack of feeling worthy, and the lack of motivation to do anything to take my mind off of killing myself and why I’m a shitty fucking person. I haven’t played any game for hours on end and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ve spent so much time wondering why publishers and developers feel the need to allow themselves to launch games that do the opposite of what I want them to do. I don’t play games to feel angry and pissed off. I play them to cope with my own aggression and self-doubt and for these people who develop their ideas into something I can experience, but fill it with absolute brokenness is an insult to me personally because how? How can this be the standard of an industry that was built on the grounds of interactive imagination? To everyone who’s reading this, I want you to know something: Life is a rollercoaster of highs and lows, and every day can be a new turn in the ride, but unlike the ones at the parks, your roller coaster ride is built by you, and you alone. I struggle with depression, but I struggle with it knowing full well how to get out of it, what caused it, what it does to me, and what it does to others. I’m just scared to be happy again because what if the depressions comes back again? Well, that’s just a risk I have to take, and if you feel the same, I suggest you take the leap of faith, because it’s well worth what’s at stake. Karma is an amazing tool to help you with depression, and I hope someone out there has Karma as their coping mechanism like me.