Your story echoed in me a bit of my own, but for slightly different reasons. My father passed away three years ago, and I fell into a deep alcoholic depression, due not only to that but also several other large hurdles in my life. Every day was the same - drink or drug as much as possible, in effort to reach unconsciousness as soon as possible. There was no end in sight as I was slowly accepting that I'd just allow the fire that was once within myself to fade away. I was becoming a hollow version of myself.

Along came this game called Dark Souls, which promised epic battles, twisted monsters, complex and deep mechanics, and an old school difficulty curve. For the first time in many months I found myself genuinely interested in something again. Staying alive in Dark Souls began to give me a reason to stay alive in Real Life. My dad was always more into shooting games, but I couldn't help but think that DS might have been his missing link to fantasy games. After all, he was the one who would make fun of me for playing on medium difficulty settings when I was a kid. It always had to be the hardest setting with him or it wasn't really playing the game - a habit I picked up and implement to this day.

So DS never seemed TOO difficult to me, but just a game that was stuck on the hard setting to begin with. But the lore, enemies, and music enthralled me, reminded me what I want to do in life (compose video game music), and while the road out of depression was and still is long and twisted, I'll always credit Dark Souls as the first thing that gave me a helping hand.

It'll be a long long time before I allow myself to go hollow again.