Gamer Elegy

Don’t look down on me, like I’m some spoiled child.

I know every lesson you think you have to teach me. I’ve always known it.

I know the only meaning in life comes from helping others; I devoted my life to it.

I always made sure to get good grades in school, and it was easy for me, too. While my friends went on trips to Europe to “find themselves”, I was hired directly out of university by the company that inspired me as a child.

We were going to create the future, and make the world a better place, for everyone. I just knew it.

but…

…

I don’t know what changed…

Either the world got more complicated, the people in charge got worse, or…

Maybe nothing had changed, and I had been a fool from the start.

We all worked as hard as we could. We stayed late day after day, driven by our shared vision of the future.

We worked so hard, we got sick, and when we got sick, we worked from bed.

Some people broke from the pressure, and quit. Everyone went easy on them, but I knew the truth.

They were weak.

While we devoted ourselves to the betterment of society, they selfishly chose their families.

People like that are worth less than nothing. They create problems just to reward themselves for solving them. Problems called “children”.

For every weak person who quit, the rest of us worked that much harder. The deadlines were immovable; the future would wait for no one.

But the future never came.

After 10 painful years, the project was unveiled to the public.

There was an explosion of publicity, both positive and negative. The company’s stock price skyrocketed, but the project was never completed, and never released.

We were laid off, all of us. Regardless of talent, intelligence, or work ethic.

Regardless of our devotion to the company’s vision.

The project was silently cancelled.

With no production costs, and no developers, every cent of investor capital went straight to the CEO, who sold the company for hundreds of billions of dollars.

Hundreds of billions of dollars. For a company with no product, and no employees.

My life’s purpose, since childhood, had been reduced to nothing but a name. A name which no longer meant anything.

No, it never meant anything. This wasn’t some accident, this was the plan from the start. It had to have been.

I had been deceived.

They had drained my life of all meaning, from a very young age, by giving me hope, in a dream they knew would never become reality.

I remember, the day after I was laid off, I slept in for the first time in over a decade.

With nothing pushing me out the door, I lingered on the sight of myself in the mirror.

I had grown fat, from years of hurried stress-eating. My hairline had receded. My eyes were cloudy, and sullen.

My life ended, long ago, but it refused to take my body with it.

I tried my hardest to live the life I had missed out on.

I drank alcohol, took every drug I could get my hands on, I even slept around.

I was like a black hole, consuming endlessly, leaving nothing behind.

I was never satisfied.

I concluded that I would never be satisfied.

Having never learned to be satisfied, always chasing fantasy, I knew “happiness” was beyond me.

With my resume, I could get any job in the world, so long as that job was tricking the next generation into believing the same lie that ruined my life.

“Meaning” was beyond me.

I concluded that the best thing I could do with my life, was to end it.

In ending my life, I would no longer be a waste of resources.

I could spare everyone from the burden of my existence.

…

but…

…

I didn’t have the strength to kill myself.

So I became a gamer instead.