I grew up in a good upper-middle-class household, with more than enough money to go around for all my family. My parents never allowed me to get any of the new things. They never bought me anything. Ever. Ever since I was young I have loved videogames though. I grew up playing the OG Xbox for the first 5 years of my life. Within those five years the following things came out:
- Xbox 360
- halo 3
- halo reach
- halo 4
- COD BO1
- COD BO2
- COD Ghosts
- Nintendo DS (DSI)
- WII u
I had to grow up with all of my friends getting the new toys, games, and consoles. All the while I had to listen to them brag about how they have this and that, and how the new story in the game was so amazing, and how I had to play it! But I couldn't. I couldn't do anything. I basically had no friends over ever because my overprotective mother who NONE of my friends could stand. I could never go to their houses because my mother was (still) overprotective. I had to sit at lunch every day at school and listen to all the cool kids talk about their games... everything that I was missing out on. I would make up stories to fit in all the time, and for a short while, my peers listened. But when they realized I was lying they stopped listening and ignored me. I would try to go to my friend's houses and I would just sit on their games for hours and hours while they basically begged me to go outside... but I couldn't. I had this BURNING desire to play everything that my DAMN mother kept me from. I LONGED to fit in. I needed to fit in... I needed to be able to talk to my friends about my sick killstreak, or my slick assassination. I longed for the acknowledgment of my peers. I felt so sad and lost every day when I went to school. I later resorted to buying my own consoles but me being only 8 years old I couldn't do much. My parents barely paid me to do anything even while they told me "You wanna earn money do some chores" but then when I tried to they would just tell me to GO TO THE FUCKING NEIGHBORS AND ASK FOR THINGS TO DO. I WAS FUCKING EIGHT.
I ended up saving my birthday money for 2 years just to get an Xbox 360 in 2014. By then all my friends had the Xbox One and I was once again left in the past... I didn't even get to use Xbox live for a long time because my mom thought that I would get kidnapped by a pedophile on the other side of the screen. But when I finally got Xbox Live I was good. I was INSANE at the games I played. I played amazingly like I was made to play it. I would destroy lobby after lobby of kids and adults alike, whether or not they were my level or higher. I started to realize that everything I had missed was everything that I had dreamed it would be... but I became obsessed. I would do nothing but play Halo 4 for days at a time in the summer. I went days without going outside. It was horrible. I would go back to school and try to talk about how great I was at my games but people would just ignore me and make fun of me because I was a "Last Gen" or a player from a previous generation of gaming console. I was empty... even lost. I spent most of my childhood chasing a dream that I could never obtain.
Years later I would finally move up to the Xbox One S after receiving it for Christmas. But don't get it twisted, the only reason that I got it is because my mother noticed that I had been crying myself to sleep because I had switched schools because I felt that I had no friends and I had failed as a child. I was 14 acting like I was 41 in a mid-life crisis trying desperately to chase my youth. Trying to find what was missing from my life. And I knew what it was. I didn't have any friends because I couldn't fit in. And she had finally seen the VERY TIP of the iceberg that she left in my childhood... how could she ever understand now... I watch videos all the time of people playing my favorite game back when it first released. I could've been a professional Competitive player in the Esports scene had I been provided the tools possible to do so. Or maybe I just could've grown up normally, playing with my real-life friends online.
Now for a present-day update. My name is Joshua. I am seventeen, I have graduated high school, and I am still chasing that broken dream. The only difference is that nowadays I know I can never reach that feeling of love, or belonging from all the friends of my childhood. Hell. Now I don't even have anyone to impress. I just get up, work, come home, play Xbox, call my girlfriend, and then play games until about 1:00 AM every night. No more friends to talk to, nobody to impress. The only real friends I have now are my Xbox Live friends. But even because of that my mom complains that I'm always on my console and that she never sees me anymore. And truth be told she's right. She doesn't see me very much anymore. Because of how much she over sheltered me, I have grown to resent her. She doesn't know why, and she doesn't bother to ask even though "it tears her up inside" how badly I treat her. (but I really am just snippy and ignore her)
As far as I see it... she specifically robbed me. Not only of my childhood but of my future. A future that I would have loved to see... and I have tried to tell her this but she just cries and says that I think she's a terrible mother. I even tried to tell her what she could do to be more likable and how we could grow as a family. But she completely ignored it and went on about her business. And now she completely forgot again. And I honestly feel that if I were to tell her all this, or even show her this post she would just try to leave my family completely, or for a few months disappear. And I can't do that to my family because deep down I love them all. As much as I tell myself I hate them, or I just want to leave... I don't. I just want so badly to be sat down, held, apologized to and just cry with me. I just want love. And acknowledgment. I want to be heard. I want to be understood. And I might be able to have that... if only I could tell them.
But instead, I remain. Broken. Sad. Lost. I will remain hollow, and a shadow. Simply because I refuse to let go because every time I bring up my problems I either get judged because boys aren't supposed to cry, or my mom can't handle it. So. Until I find a way to finally get this off my chest...
...I will remain in silence...
