Morrigan Joins the Game Quitters

[Morrigan]

Hello. Here I'll go by Morrigan, and I'm a video games addict. 

I live in Berlin, moved here right as the coronavirus crisis hit. I'm artsy and nerdy and love to combine the two in designing websites at the front end, graphics and code alike. I'm gender non-binary, proudly married to a trans woman whom I love to pieces - tied the knot last autumn. I have ADHD, a wellspring of creative energy at its best, and PTSD, a wellspring of empathy at its best. At their worst, they tag-team to create distractions and addictions to numb the leftover pain of trauma. Faulty coping mechanisms to a T. 

I'll save the larger part of my story for my journal, but suffice to say, the COVID-19 pandemic hasn't been good for my mental health, and the old addiction came roaring back. While I have had a healthy relationship with video games at times in my life where I have structure and purpose, now I feel aimless, floating, and jaded, as trauma from a dark period in my life is resurfacing. I play video games to numb in dark and difficult periods of my life, and the darkness of the world feels oppressive these days. 

Today I decided enough was enough: I wanted my life back. I deleted video games from all my devices. I wanna live on my terms. I want art and walks in the park and urban exploration. I want to live in the real world and to construct my own worlds on the page, not live in someone else's. I want to write and write and write on everything under the sun. I want a profession I can be proud of, to learn the language of the country I'm living in, to make whatever difference I can in this tumultuous world. I want to connect with the people of this city. I want to kickstart my transition as a non-binary person -- whatever that ends up looking like. I wanna live on my terms, not caught in the addiction-loop of a game. 

It's good to be here, and share this commitment to beginning a better chapter. 

As you say, "life unlocked."

Cheers,
Morrigan (pronouns: they, them, theirs)

Edited July 1, 2020 by Morrigan
grammar, spelling, clarity