A
little before this, something tragic happened to me that may be the leading
cause to my seizures. We were moving into a new house my mother had recently
purchase, and my curiosity got the best of me. Being introduced into my large
empty room, I notice a big blue wooden toy box in the closet. Once left alone,
I decided to check out the toy box to see what was inside. Well, it was empty.
But I thought it’d be cute if I could fit inside it seeing as how it was large
enough for me to fit in. While trying to get inside the toy box, I found out
the hard way that it wasn’t very sturdy. As I stepped inside, I use the lid of
the box to hold my balance, only to slip back having my head strike against the
edge of the toy box. The lid wasn’t exactly screw on correctly as one of the
bolts came loose, causing me to slip. Little did I know, what I slipped on was
a nail that impaled my skull about 2 inches deep.
Rushed
into the ER, doctors tried everything they could to stop the bleeding. My
crying faded into a coma, as I became unconscious on the hospital bed, now waiting
for death. It was only a matter of time now, as there was nothing the doctors
could do. Then, I saw an image… it was the scariest thing I’ve seen in my life
(I don’t want to go to deep into this part because people will think I’m crazy.
So let’s continue on). Next thing I remembered, I was awake seeing very bright
lights in front of me. I believed I was still lying on the hospital bed… but I
notice something different about my vision. The doctors explained to my mother
how it was a miracle the blood suddenly stopped. They don’t know what happened,
but they couldn’t find an explanation of what happened. The brain should’ve
exhausted all oxygen due to lack of blood, not allowing me to continue
functioning, but here I am. Even to this day it can’t be explained how it
stopped or how I even survived. Due to this scenario, I was labeled as a
“special child” until stated otherwise. But, bad news still came my way, as it
was explained by the doctors my days were numbered.
Something
was different about me, the way everything felt and looked. For one, it was
hard for me to speak, and everything I said came out as strong mumbles. But for
some odd reason, no one but my sister could understand me, and she would have
to translate everything I said. When speaking to my mom, it would come off as
something like, “mum ca yo’ ge ne su ci fu” and my sister would be beside me
and translating what I said. She was always right, and I couldn’t understand
why. For now I just accepted it, but the biggest change I notice were the
colors around me. No longer was the toy box that almost killed me blue, but now
orange. Did they paint this as I was gone? Maybe so much blood filled the toy
box walls that they had to color it a different shade. But that lead to another
question, as the grass outside to me was no longer green, it was brownish
looking color. And the sky above me no longer blue, but now a bright green. At
the time, this new arrange of colors had no effect on me, and I was too young
to care about it.
Eventually,
and I was put into pre-K or whatever it’s called before elementary school. My
behavior was frowned upon but not due to my mischief behavior, but rather, how
socially awkward I acted. My mumbling was still bad so it was hard to
communicate with those around, and I just had trouble understanding what the
teachers wanted me to do during assignments. The teachers would get upset at me
because I colored in the wrong colors on the sheets of cartoon animals we were
given. Directions would say to use X color and the teachers would point out
what the color that was suggested. However, when they had random music playing
in the background in the school room coming from the radio, the perceptive of
color would change for me due to the melody, and I had no idea how to color the
cartoon animal in front of me. Coloring everything wrong and I acting very
anti-social to the people around me only gave worry, especially since the
incident. Because I was lashed out at doing things “incorrectly”, I could never
tell when I was doing something right or wrong… and there was nothing there to
help correct my judgment as it seem like everything I did was wrong. So much
negativity against me because they couldn’t see what I could see, I eventually
headed into a deep depression that only turned into anger.
My mom
came home one day with a small monitor connected to a large yellow metal case.
Seem like she got herself a home computer for all of us to play. One problem:
no one knew how to use it and my mom didn’t allow me to get on it. I don’t
remember the exact age, but I know I was still too young to even be allowed to
look at this thing. My mom was convinced that this thing was just too
complicated for us, that anything we did would cause the computer to crash, so
my sister stayed away, but this only peak my curiosity of what it could do. You
would think my lesson of curiosity with a life threatening situation would tell
me to avoid this, but for some reason I just wanted to play with the latest toy
in the house. Mother would place the computer in her room to insure no one
would touch it, but while she was out at work she’ll have our Grandma babysit
us. Luckily, Grandma didn’t care what I did as long as she cried out my name
from living room and I respond back. I was still in the stage of mumbling, so
long as some type of voice came out of my mouth, it was enough. Looking into the
monitor, I was amazed as to how everything looked on the desktop. It was a
Windows computer, and I was just stunned as to how clicking on certain icons
would change colors of those specific objects. “How do they open?” I thought,
wondering how certain actions were triggered. Eventually, I came across an
error stating I did something wrong on an application. Rather than getting
scared, I knew this device could be my judgment, unlike the people around me,
this device can determined if I was right or wrong because it was me trying to
figure it out. My excitement didn’t last, as I was soon caught on the computer
by my mother with the large error on the screen. Luckily, this lead to
something great to come my way, and that was getting my first PC game ever, Metal
Marines.
At the
time, this game had amazing graphics. It was a real time strategy game that
allowed you to build army bases and launch missiles to the opposing force,
while showing animated missiles and weapons fly across the screen. For a floppy
disk game, this was awesome! Reading the manual, it gave proper instructions as
to how to play the game and ways to defeat your opponent. The game gave me a
new sense of confidences as it me realize I’m not always wrong. If I can
complete this game while others around me couldn’t, then I have a better
understanding of how things around me work. That… or maybe I can only
understand what the computer would tell me. However, my body would so something
very strange while playing the game. As the music change, so did the colors of
the characters in the game, which is expected at this point. But as I continued
to play, I notice at random times, my body would shake uncontrollably for just
a second and I’ve lost all memory as to what I was doing in the past 10 seconds
or so. I would take a long pause after this happened and wonder “What just
happened” while trying to remember what I was doing. This also affected me as I
was playing the game, but was the game causing this?
Few
years pass, and I got heavy into First Person Shooting games starting with
Tribes. The game itself created my FPS career, but that’s for another topic.
The company who made this game also created a game called StarSiege (which is
the game I wanna talk about relating to this). Basically you were in giant
custom made robots you designed within’ the game duking it out with other
players online. Due to Tribes success, this game’s popularity was fading away.
The online community of StarSiege was actually very helpful in teaching me how
to play, as controlling the mechs forced you to use almost every key on the
keyboard to maintain the life of your robot. Problem was, everything was labeled
in color, and the people in my clan that I recently joined were giving me tips
via voice chat to help shift certain things by describing the colors and what
they do. I was still too young, so I didn’t bother buying a mic, I didn’t want
my online buddies to hear my voice and know I was still below 10 years of age
(and judging from that now, it seem like that was for the best). The more I
played and the more my online buddies tutored me, the more I was able to
determine these colors. I would sometimes see certain objects on the hud glow
in all sorts of colors, fading from red, orange, into brown or whatever.
However, because they all followed a specific pattern, I was able to understand
what the color was supposed to be. Thanks to their teachings, I was able to
determine what the colors were, even with colors outside the game. My online
friends taught me more than the game’s mechanics, even if they didn’t know it.
Problem was, as I continued playing these high intense graphical computer
games, the “mind blows” kept happening and I eventually brushed them off as no
big deal. Because they happened so often, I was able to suffer a mind blow, but
still maintain memory as to what I was thinking about. Granted, I still forget
the last 10 seconds of what I was thinking, but I was started to become quicker
about reminding myself as to what I was just thinking about. I asked my uncle
about these ‘mind blows’ to see if it was anything serious about them. He told
me that it was no big deal and he gets those all the time as well when he’s on
the computer. For now, I ignored it.
Years
passed and I was eventually stepping away from competitive PC gaming and more
into Console. I recently purchase StarCraft late in its life, but it was still
a popular title for being old. Didn’t care who I played, I didn’t play this
game nowhere near as competitive as I did with my previous PC games, so I would
normally just play with against my cousin online. One night, something
happened, and it was the worst mind blow yet. Rather than just the simple shake
and temporary memory lost, I feel off my chair and straight onto the floor,
completely unctuous.
