Promise

posted on 28 Dec 2024

It’s been two years since I played Signalis. It’s difficult for me to fathom that amount of time, because the past few years of my life have simultaneously flown by and have felt like an eternity.

The review I left back in December of 2022 happened to be the last major review that I posted, at least on Steam. Looking at my history, it looks like I posted Diablo: Hellfire and A Plague Tale: Requiem on GOG. All in all, I’ve stopped writing reviews. Not only have I not really played anything substantial in 2024, but I’ve lost the urge to actually review a game. Looking at any review, it inevitably breaks down into nothingness. I have nothing to say, nothing that I want to share.

And I especially don’t want to share it with anyone on platforms like Steam. That cesspit does not deserve to see anything that has effort put into it.

The time that I last played Signalis, I was in a deep depression. It had been one of the most difficult and manic years of my entire life and I had come off of prescription amphetamines I no longer wanted to be on a few months prior. I was experiencing extended withdrawal combined with isolation combined with seasonal affective disorder.

The game made its mark on me. When I happen to be in a state of negativity or extreme emotion, whatever it is I’m consuming hits me that much harder, that much deeper, and touches on levels that can’t be glimpsed in a paradigm of stability. Signalis touched on several sore spots for me: reading notes of the poor Replika’s teeth falling out and covering them with blood, their hair thinning, their bodies aching, their increasing depression, their isolation. Time running out, not enough time for anything, it all passed by in a blur.

Not enough time with the person you love.

In my isolation, I spend an extraordinary amount of time thinking of decay, thinking of my own mortality, thinking of the trajectory of my life.

I have always felt that there has been an extremely thick psychological wall separating me from the world and from other people. I can never really go out and touch what’s there or experience it on a level otherthan withdrawn observation. I can say things, I can touch things, but the impact of them never feels like it’s enough.

I imagine getting to the end of my life and this has been my reality the entire time. Wasted time. With each day that passes, I would’ve come no closer to actually existing before my demise.

The people I love will never really know how much I loved them.

In my suffering, I wish to constantly change things. I want things to align to an ideal that feels so consuming it could destroy me (and it often feels like it is really physically destroying me). But I am powerless to do so. And as I become more damaged, I become more incapable of living. Everything bothers me, everything feels like acidic liquid being poured on mutilated skin.

The sight of something that I hate is akin to glass shattering in my eyes and my spine being broken. I want to be so far away from it all, because it all hurts so fucking much. It’s unbearable.

I told myself that I would finish my main work-in-progress novel before I turned 30.

That did not come to fruition.

And I am not surprised in the least, for I’ve let myself down over and over for the majority of my twenties. There was a time period in my life where after that particular period, nothing was ever the same for me. I became permanently damaged in some fundamental, existential way. Like my soul has been scarred and no longer functions at full capacity regardless of how much I want something, how much I work for it.

My brain feels dead.

I got the “promise” ending this time around in Signalis. Finally taking some time off of work, I thought it would be awfully thematic of me to do another playthrough of the game so I could see how it hit me two years later. I saw things that I did not see before, but I also missed things that I saw the first time around. I was reminded that each time I perceive something, it’s slightly different and only a pathetically small piece of the complete picture that is true understanding.

When Elster strangled Ariane to finally put an end to their search, to put an end to their suffering that had lasted for countless cycles, I started crying. And this crying spread like a virus into other compartments of my psyche, and I began crying even more profusely for everything that has been taken away from me up to this point in my life.

I cried for the viscious onslaughts I experience that make me feel so broken and feeble. For the time that I’ve wasted. For the tiny amount of time I have left.

For being trapped in a void that I can’t seem to find my way out of. I’ve been inside of here for so long now that memories outside of it seem like the vague consciousness imprints of a past life.

Just like what I witnessed in the ending of Signalis, I feel like I will finally get to the end of my life one day and stop trying so hard to hold on.

I’ll strangle myself, die, and then I can finally smile know that it’s over and there doesn’t have to be any more fighting.