Escapism

The tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities

anonymous

I have been a practitioner of escapism for a very long time; from when I first threw myself into the world of “Mario” when I was a kid, to now, where I still spend a lot of time in the streets of “Night City” or in the skyways and docks of “Nivalis Nights.” Since before I could imagine, video games have been my escape. It is so easy to get lost in the medium and immerse myself in the world; more than movies, books, and videos, games afford the escapist an ability that none of the other mediums do—control.

In a video game I have the control to interact with the world as I’d like; within the constraints of the game of course. In “Cyberpunk” I can drive around in awesome futuristic cars, replace my legs with a prosthesis that allows me to ignore gravity, or give a guy a headache with my mind (Please note I do not wish to give people headaches with my mind in real life!). In “Nivalis Nights” I can run a noodle shop and explore a dense cyberpunk city. In both these cases this is my choice, and that control is exhilarating. Not all games are like this, but roleplaying games (my games of choice) are built on the very promise that you the player get to make the choices and the decisions.

School was always a struggle for me, so naturally I did anything to avoid working and dove headfirst into screens. For most of my childhood, I was, according to my mother, “glued to my screen.” I slowly drifted away from it however, until 2020. The pandemic eliminated virtually every avenue of entertainment that I had outside of my computer. Well at least that’s what it felt like back then. So I went back to escaping into games, and I played more games during that time than I did ever before. Tallying it up, I played about 3,000 hours worth of games during the pandemic. That’s about 125 days that I spent on my computer. Even after the pandemic ended I continued to sink countless and countless hours into so many different games. After the pandemic I didn’t really have the excuse of being trapped in my house to keep playing; so what was it that the escape into the games gave me that reality didn’t?

The games had fantastical experiences I could not experience in real life, like slaying dragons in the “Lands Between,” wielding the weave in the world of “Faerun,” or fighting for humanity against the forces of the covenant. It wasn’t this that had me coming back to these worlds however, it was the mundane things. It was driving my car in “Mafia,” dancing in a tavern in “Kingdom Come II’s Bohemia,” it was brushing the hair on my horse’s back in “Read Dead Redemption 2.” Maybe even more than that it was dressing a certain way in “GTA,” growing my character’s hair out in “Star Wars: Old Republic,” and simply painting my nails in “Cyberpunk.” These small, mundane expressions of myself were the reason that I escaped into these games for all these years.

So that is what escapism was for me, an escape from the reality of being unable to wield magic and being unable to express myself as freely as I wanted to. However things are different now, I’m no longer constrained by what once held me back. Despite that I felt I could only really express myself in games, I also felt like I needed to escape when I didn’t. Escapism was no longer a sanctuary for me, it became its own prison.

Escaping the Escapism is easier said than done; it became something that I can only really describe as a vice. But through an effort to reach out into the real world, I’m slowly making it, despite what I might be told. I don’t need to just express myself in worlds wholly detached from my own. So now I walk around with my nails black, and my hair longer by the day. The life you live can be just as thrilling as the escape, just wait and try—you’ll get there.