Hello, this is a post for supporters only.
I just wanted to write down for a bit of accountability how I'm expecting this book to be laid out.
I'm expecting it to consist of a number of 'visions' (the name is inspired by one of my favorite PS1 games, Klonoa) which will start each chapter. These visions will be written in order of how they happened. They will be short, dreamlike perhaps, and recount some of the most traumatic and important experiences of my life. An example of one of the more innocuous visions is at the end of this post.
The actual chapters themselves will be sculpted around a number of different video games. These will all be specific ones that had an impact on me or the industry as a whole. I'll also get into the games which were so utterly crap, writing about them is its own kind of PTSD.
Although in my public update I admitted I'm not recovered, the fact I'm still here is huge. I do, to an extent, have video games to thank for that. Sometimes I wonder if recovery isn't the final boss battle at all, it's a false finish. You never really 'recover' from some things, but you can fill the spaces between your broken pieces with gold.
Vision 1 – 12
The ‘flat’ isn’t really a flat; It’s a sort of maisonette, tacked on to the back of the hotel my mother runs with The Man Who Is Not My Father. For some reason, we all refer to it as such – there is no ground floor, only a flight of dusty stairs leading up to a landing. Take a right, and you’ll stand between the living room and the kitchen. Take a left, and up you go on another flight of equally – perhaps more so – dusty stairs to mum’s room.
The Man Who is Not My Father has his bedroom next to mum’s, the walls decorated with paintings of Lancaster Bombers and some of his Navy medals. My brother and I sleep with mum when we are over, taking turns on one half of her double bed or the piss-stained camp bed next to it, but I never twig that The Man Who is Not My Father likely sleeps in that room too when we aren’t there.
My sibling and I spend most of our time in the living room since that’s where the PlayStation is. When she’s not sleeping or working downstairs in the bar, mum chain-smokes here while clicking about on her computer; a massive, bulky monitor yellowed by the air. We pull our shirts up over our noses while mashing at plastic buttons. Crash Bandicoot jumps and spins through a thin veil of smoke.
The walls in this room used to be white. I don’t remember them ever being white, but I know they were at one point because of the pearly outlines revealed when a bookcase or a table flush against the wall is ever moved. I will prod at the lines between those two worlds with the stub of my finger, squishing against that minute void between healthy and unhealthy.
I’ve read the pamphlets from school about smoking. I know how bad it is for mum, and I know how bad it is for us to be breathing it. The thing is, mum gives absolutely zero shits in that regard.
She always stinks of smoke. Her hands are always so cold. When I’m ill, home from school, and tucked up in my side of her bed watching boring daytime television, she will place her freezing palm on my forehead. It’s soothing, smoky, cold.
Berkeley Reds. And a Bacardi and Coke. Often, many Bacardi and Cokes.
Sometimes I will walk into that living room and smell dying. Smoke, alcohol. Pouring out of her pores.
It smells of home.