Just a quick introduction to give this story some context:
My mom's a bitch.
Okay, so three years ago, I was really depressed. Was doing poorly in school, didn't have many friends, and was home alone for most of my youth. My mom was always away at work or hanging out with her friends. She barely raised me. Haven't seen my father since I was 2. I've heard her talk on the phone to him while I hid behind the couch to listen in. Only a few times I got to hear his voice barely from the phone, and that usually involved both of the screaming at each other. The reason I never saw my father was because my mother was given full custody. She wanted to hurt him by keeping me all to herself and to collect child support. It's absolutely the only reason why I only have a mother, and no father.
Anyway, when I started playing this game just to kill time, I was just at a very confusing time of my life. I wouldn't say I was suicidal, but was pretty depressed, just void of life, like an empty shell just going through the motions. Had only a few friends, well, of the few I can count with one hand, all but one were friends, the rest being more like acquaintances. This friend by the way, introduced me to League of Legends. She gave me my first skin ever, Astronaut Teemo, and it's the only reason why I main Teemo to this day, otherwise, would probably hate him like most people. We used to play a lot which lasted a few months, but we quickly grew apart when she got a boyfriend. When she did play, she would only play with her boyfriend or her other friends.
Needless to say, I was all alone. I was sad, also angry, and had no direction, being a teenager basically raising himself from the start. Starting getting poor grades because I wasn't motivated. However, I started to turn around when I met my future duo queue partner. He mained support both in game and in life, at least to me he did. I used to be horrible at this game. Like really bad. People joke about wood league being below bronze, but if that were a real thing, I'd be in it. I did play a few other champions, but mainly Teemo in all roles. I didn't really know what I was doing until I met this guy. Because he mained support, and we got to be close friends, I started to main ADC. I start to learn why specializing in a role and then branching out made the most sense when it came to learning the game. I also learned the importance of each role through him. He just kind of opened the game at a strategic level for me. Although I'm not an expert, probably 90% of what I know came from him.
However, game knowledge wasn't the biggest contribution he gave to me. It was when we started to use skype was when he turned my life around. I actually found it weird that he was an older guy. At first, after all our games and chatting, I thought whoa... this guy isn't what I thought he would be, but of course, he never lied about who he was. We never shared personal information. I realized this is still the same person, and quickly became comfortable speaking with him on skype. We started out simply communication our game plan, but here and there, we'd reveal information about our everyday lives. It turned out despite the age difference, we had a lot in common. Turns out he used the game as an escape, to not necessarily meet people, but socialize with people. We became great friends because he became my mentor and he enjoyed the fact that someone was there willing to listen to him, and learn.
He helped me realize that life was very much like this game. There are many roles to choose from. You have to choose your favorite one, then specialize. Once you discover who you want to be, you gotta find out everything you can to be great at it. To me, this just opened my eyes. Seemed like a very general analogy, but I guess I just never had someone talk to me like this before. I was lost, still didn't know what I wanted from life, but I sure did have a blast maining ADC with him, and I figured... if I can find out what I want from life, then life would start looking a lot better. Quickly, I became more motivated. Wanted to stop doing poorly in school. Went from a 2.4 GPA to a 4.0 the following semester.
It was so crazy. Honestly looked to this guy as a father since I never had one. He had the best advice. He never talked down to me. In fact, he had a lot of disclaimers saying often that it was what he thought, but he wasn't an expert or he wouldn't know from personal experience. Definitely a person you can talk to about anything. I asked him once why he spent a lot of his time in game and mentoring others. No doubt he was great at it, but I wondered why he spent nearly all of his free time doing this than other things. This is when I realized we had something even more in common that most people; he lost his son a while ago. He didn't want to explain the whole story, but he said he loved him and wish he could have raised him. I guess, mentoring people in game was his way of "raising his child." At this point, I felt sorry for the guy, and forgot about all my problems. I never really thought that this guy might have been my father. I never made that connection. I mean, to me, I knew I never would meet my father in real life and my mother would make sure of that. I didn't even fantasize if maybe this guy was my father. The connection I made was simply the fact we both lost something huge in our lives. Also, because he didn't elaborate on his story, I assumed his son had died or something.
Anyway, one game, we started lagging like crazy. East Cost ping for the win... I ended up dying in lane, giving first blood, and quickly apologized. However, he said no, it wasn't my fault, that he lagged because of a big ping spike. I said I lagged too. That was when we found out we lived in the same state. Yeah Riot... your lag actually did some good :p
Anyway, I asked if he wanted to meet someday. This guy wasn't a creep at any point. Yes, he fully well understands how creepy it would be for an adult to go somewhere to meet up with a kid. Long story short, he said it wouldn't be appropriate. Even though I understood, this really made me depressed. I tried not to bring it up just to not make things awkward. However, about 1.5 years later, there was this event going on in what turns out to be the adjacent city between where we both lived. I convinced my mom to take me. Had to promise to do chores for 2 months, not like I didn't do them anyway. He already talked about going and this is why I practically begged my mom for us to go. I never told him I was going though. The event wasn't the biggest, but it definitely wasn't small. A few hours after I got there, I wanted to wait just to make sure he was there. We ended up sharing phone numbers a few months back just to text to see if the other was available for a duo queue. Well, I called him up, pretending to ask him what was up, and shared some fake information about games I just had played. I tried to keep the conversation going to try to see if I could find a person talking on the cell phone having the same conversation. It was really hard. Took me 30 minutes. Halfway between the conversation, I heard a game machine from his end, and I remember passing it, and that's when I realized I might be able to pin point his location by hearing the sounds coming from his end. I finally found him! It was the freakiest thing ever because he kind of looked like me. I just knew at this point that this guy was my father. I just can't explain the feeling. He was already like a father to me in game, and outside of game for the past few years. If I had to pick anyone in the world to be my father, it would have been him. One look at my, and he started crying. We didn't hug or anything though. It was very emotional, but meeting for the first time was just weird like this. You can know someone as much as possible through calls and chat, but they are always to some degree a stranger when finally meeting them face to face which is what I think happened that day. Anyway, he bought me a corndog and we sat down, and talked about when I lost my father and when he lost his son. It didn't take that long to put all the connections together. The mentioning of my mother's name pretty much sealed the deal. Sadly, the conversation didn't last that long. He was afraid if he was caught by my mother, she would put a restraining order on him and he would have to move away. We agreed we couldn't lose this connection. So now, we still play, mostly every day. We've still only seen each other that one time, but seeing my father in real life was priceless (unlike this game, which is currently priced to me for $800+, damn you skins!). Honestly, as much as I love playing the game, I love the father and son moments I've been missing out on. We share much more detail now about our lives after meeting. I may not have the traditional father that lives with me, that plays catch outside with, but I feel like this is absolutely what I've been missing, and because of League of Legends and Riot Games, I finally have a father.
And screw my mother, she's a bitch.