Why I Never Forgot That TOWN! (PERSONAL)
🌫️ “IN MY RESTLESS DREAMS, I SEE THAT TOWN…” 🌫️
When I was in elementary school, I would often spend the weekend at my dad’s house. 🏠
I fondly remember those weekends! They were the epitome of what I’d call: PURE Relaxation and Indulgence! Or as some people today might call it in modern day: the IDGAF-weekend! 🤣
On Friday nights he’d pick me up from school, and before we went to his house we’d stop for dinner at the nearby Burger King drive-thru. 🍔
Another weekend we may have stopped at the local hot dog place. 🌭
Or heck, another weekend maybe we’d order a bunch of pizzas for pick-up! 🍕
As I write this, all the memories are starting to come back to me! I remember the times my dad, sister, and I would order a few huge pizzas, each with different toppings, along with a few liters of soda, and we’d pick them up from the local pizza place. 🥤
We’d spend the rest of Friday night binging on pizza, soda, and watching movies! 📺
For those who know me now, let me clarify: eating healthy was NOT at all a factor for me back as a young teen! 😅
And I remember one of my favorite movies I’d watch again and again was “Good Burger”, a very dumb comedy but all of us shared the same sense of humor! 😂
But as time passed, my sister got older and found other ways to spend her weekends. Eventually these weekends became just my dad and I spending time together. 👥
But no worries, it wasn’t just a pile of junk food and movies. We also had VIDEOGAMES! 🎮
I can vividly remember the days of me packing up my PlayStation 2 into a suitcase every weekend before heading to my dad’s house. I’d wrap up the console and game controllers in towels because I didn’t want them to bang around in the suitcase during the travel there. 👍
And so, every weekend I’d pack it up in a suitcase with other PlayStation 2 games, and I’d bring them over to my dad’s house to play. 😁
Sometimes we’d stop at Blockbuster and I’d rent other videogames. For those not old enough to remember (I am getting OLD), Blockbuster was a store you could go in to rent movies and videogames for a set period of time and fee. 📼
If you’re still not familiar, this was all before Netflix! 😜
Anyways, I remember renting MANY videogames including Pokemon games for my GameBoy Color, multiplayer games so I could play with my dad, and games…that definitely my mom wouldn’t approve of me playing at such a young age. 😅
But Dad did! 🤫
I can’t mention how many times I begged my dad rent the videogame “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City” for me. It was my favorite videogame, and I played for hours on end! ⏳
To explain the game in the most politically correct way, you play a gangster in an open-ended city environment where you are pretty much able to do whatever you wanted. Most often than not that anything included some sort of crime and avoiding the cops! 🚔
Mom, if you’re reading this…now you know! ❤️
🗣️ “DONALD…YOU’RE RAMBLING AGAIN! WHAT’S YOUR POINT WITH THIS POST?” 🗣️
Don’t worry, I’m getting there! This post is NOT about this game. This post is NOT even about hanging out at my dad’s on the weekends!
If you remember the title at the beginning of the post, you may see where I’m heading…
🗣️ “…UH, NO? RESTLESS DREAMS? WHAT TOWN? PLUS, YOU DIDN’T WRITE A POLARIZING CLICKBAIT TITLE TO GRAB MY ATTENTION! I’M ABOUT TO STOP READING DONALD!” 🗣️
Feel free, I don’t blame you! I’m sick of trying to endlessly please others anyway. And that’s why I’m even writing this post in the first place! ❤️
What I really wanted to share with you all is a part of me a lot of you don’t know about. For most who have met and known me the past few years, you’ve seen many facets on my diamond. 💎
But it’s time for another facet to be illuminated, if not for you all but for my own authenticity! I say I’m going to be more real, so here you go…! 😊
For those of you who have read my previous posts, I’ve lately become very passionate about the Psychological Development of the Individual.
I truly believe that if more of us took the time to analyze and understand ourselves that we’d discover there’s so much more to our greater potentials we have yet to unravel! ❤️
But as a matter of fact, this passion for Psychology isn’t new for me. 😲
In fact, if you want to know where my real passion for Psychology first started, it was HERE! It started way back here at my dad’s house when I was a teenager…
It was when I visited the town of Silent Hill. 🗺️
What used to once be a resort town has become a ghost town. What used to be a town filled with tourists is now completely empty, its streets shrouded in an endless fog. The complete history of Silent Hill remains a mystery, but what is known is it has a dark past. ⌛
To clarify, Silent Hill is NOT a real town. It is actually the fictional creation of some Japanese videogame developers back in the early 2000’s, who made a series of survival horror videogames centered around this mysterious town. 🔎
But there was one particular game I played as a young teen at my dad’s house that caught my attention more than most: “Silent Hill 2”. 🌫️
“DONALD, HORROR AND VIDEOGAMES ARE NOT MY THING! WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH PSYCHOLOGY?”
I’m getting there, don’t worry! 😊
So apart from me shooting up gangsters in “Grand Theft Auto” every weekend at my dad’s house, I was also entranced playing the Silent Hill series and continuously renting it from Blockbuster too! 💿
It was the first “horror” game I can say I ever really wanted to play. Because I’m really not a big “horror” person! 😅
But something really caught my interest about the games, especially “Silent Hill 2”. It wasn’t so much the “horror” or the “monsters” in the games as much as it was about the story and its themes. 📖
I was fascinated by how deep the storylines went, how complex (and all-too-human) the characters were, and how there was so much happening beneath the surface of the game! 🔎
It’s important I emphasize again: I’m NOT a big horror buff. But I realized that Silent Hill was not just some haunted house of “boos” game. What I was discovering for the first time in my life was what was commonly referred to as the genre of psychological horror. 😨
Unlike other horror that’s filled with tons of jumpscares and gruesome violence, this horror dealt with the mind. Sometimes the greatest fears are the we create in our heads. Sometimes it’s what you DON’T see that’s actually scarier than what’s actually there. 🧠
“VIDEOGAMES BEING ‘DEEP’?! GIVE ME A BREAK DONALD!”
In order for you to greater understand what I mean, I’m going to briefly share with you the storyline of Silent Hill 2. ⬇️
It tells the story of James Sunderland, a man who is still grieving the loss of his wife Mary from 3 years prior. One day, James receives a mysterious letter from his Mary, saying she’s “waiting for him” in the town of Silent Hill, in their “special place”. 😲
Yes, you read that right. He receives a letter from his late wife who died 3 years prior from a terminal disease saying she’s waiting for him in the town! 😱
Still haunted by his grief and determined to seek closure, he heads to Silent Hill…and what he soon finds is far more haunting than he could ever imagine…! 🤫
In order for you to better understand the “psychology” I’m referring to, I’m going to have to spoil the twists of the story for you all. For those who may want to actually play the game without spoilers, I’m giving you a warning NOW!
🛑 DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER! 🛑
🛑 SERIOUSLY! 🛑
🛑 THESE SPOILERS ARE WHY THE GAME IS STILL CONSIDERED A MASTERPIECE TO THIS DAY! 🛑
⬇️ OKAY, HERE WE GO! ⬇️
Eventually, James finds his way to he and Mary’s “special place” that she referred to in her letter. After hours of playing the game, we as the audience are finally confronted with the truth about what happened to Mary…🙌
We realize that James, the character we’ve been playing the entire time, is NOT the hero of this story. 😲
The letter he received from Mary didn’t exist; it was just a black sheet of paper. 😱
Mary didn’t die 3 years ago; it was only a few days ago. 😱
And Mary didn’t die of her terminal disease; James killed her in a desperate act to end both of their suffering. 😱
James didn’t actually go to Silent Hill to find his wife; the guilty part of his unconscious drew him there so he could face the truth. 😱
The monsters James encounters in the town are not real monsters; they are manifestations conjured out of James’s personal fears and desires. 😱
The other people he meets in the town may be real, but they are merely a means for James to continue coming closer to the truth. 😱
One character he meets is a woman who looks exactly like his wife. But her name isn’t Mary; it’s Maria. She’s not conservative like Mary; Maria is seductive and sexual. She’s not independent like Mary; Maria is overly needy and dependent on James. 😭
But throughout the game, James continues to finds himself in helpless situations with Maria, where he keeps having to see her get killed by something outside his control over and over again. And for every time she turns up miraculously okay, another situation soon happens…😫
In finding out the truth, we realize that Maria isn’t real. She’s representative of who James wished Mary was. Maria is only a pawn created by the town to torture James, for every time she dies James is always unable to save her. 😱
And it is only when James fully confronts his demons, when he’s face to face with the truth, that the town no longer has power over him. It is only when he has made closure with his past that he is then free to leave Silent Hill…
So yeah, it’s no Grand Theft Auto! 😆
But psychologists like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung would have a field day psychoanalyzing this game! 💯
So there you have it! As unlikely as it sounds, my fascination with Psychology really did start off on a much DARKER note to say the least! 😅
And don’t worry, even for the sake of this post I am still covering the bare minimum. There are way darker themes in the game I didn’t even mention here. Play the game if you dare! 😈
So yeah, perhaps some of my followers are shocked reading this, thinking a guy like me could ever ever be interested in stuff like this, to think the “Happy Guy” wasn’t always about sunshine and rainbows! 😉
I’m not afraid to embrace the dark. It helps the light shine even brighter! ☯️
But as you can see these days, my love for psychology has clearly evolved from not just focusing on the darkest places but also to the brightest. But I’ve never forgotten my roots. I’ve never forgotten how “Silent Hill 2” was the starting point for me. 👍
One thing is for sure: I would NOT be as passionate about Psychology today had I never visited Silent Hill…and squinted my eyes every time I heard nearby monsters in the game! 🤣
It means a lot to me, to say the least! Yes, it’s quite a darker topic, so I doubt you’ll see me make any other posts about it in the future. But I wanted to share it with you all because it’s a part of me you don’t typically see! It’s always been there, just not as openly shared…and now it is! 😝
If there’s anything you as a reader can take from this, “Silent Hill 2” reminds me how we all create our own subjective reality, for better or for worse. We may not have a town physically manifesting our hopes and fears but our minds certainly manifest how we see ourselves and other people. 👀
It reminds me how powerful the unconscious mind is, how it’s influencing our lives even when we’re not consciously aware of it. 🧠
It reminds me to always look beneath the surface of what we say and do. So often there’s always far more than meets the eye. 👀
It reminds me how we need to make peace with our inner demons or they can mentally wreak havoc on our lives. 🙌
As Oscar Wilde put it: “We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.” 👿
🌫️ “IN MY RESTLESS DREAMS, I SEE THAT TOWN…” 🌫️
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