Goodbye 2018, the best (and worst) year of my life
By: The Esports Writer
Tags: Esports, New Year, Life, Mental Health

League of Legends World Championship final in Incheon, South Korea (credit: Riot Games)

2018 couldn’t have started better for me. At midnight, surrounded by friends and people I’ve come to know through the zany world that is esports, I kissed the girl who I thought I’d be together with for years to come. She was way smarter than me, interested in my hobbies, wasn’t in the esports scene (major plus), and she accepted my quirks, positive and negative.

That night, we made it official.

Five nights later, waking up to head off to the inaugural Overwatch League media day down near Universal Studios, she woke me up with a phone call. Over the next three minutes, she ran me down, told me how awful I was, and informed me that she had blocked me on every social media platform known to man.

Well, that fairy tale lasted a long time.

While for a majority of the year I’d hold this quick detachment as a slight against her — what a monster to do such a thing! — it’s come apparent to me as the months have gone by that most of the reason for the breakup was myself. I was an idiot. I was the one in the wrong. I was self-destructive. I wasn’t in the right place to be in a relationship. Far from it.

A month following that breakup, I’d be laying in my bed not able to get out of it. I was physically fine, but I just couldn’t emotionally. Every thing I did wrong in my life was coming back to me, and I became frozen in place. I didn’t deserve anything I had. What was the point of life? My arms felt heavy. My legs felt like tree trunks, rooted down into the earth. During that time I was offered chances I’d love to have taken, including covering events that were dreams of mine for years, but I just couldn’t. I declined. I laid in bed. I felt like nothing in the world mattered.

It got to a point where I actually had to search for actual help. ESPN were behind me in anything I needed when it came to taking time off, so for two weeks I went to a hospital hear in Los Angeles where I enrolled in daily therapy and practices to try and get myself right. I saw a doctor once or twice a day. Instead of globetrotting the world and experiencing all the fun that was laying for me on a platter, I was in a stuffy room with old, tattered couches surrounded by doctors, therapists, counselors, and others needing help to get by.

While I’d love to say that the two weeks magically cured me, I didn’t. It did get me out of the house and moving again, uprooting me from the metaphorical earth, and that was a solid start. I began writing articles and going to the NA LCS and Overwatch League again, and, on the surface at least, getting back to normal. I’d do videos in the ESPN studio, hang out with friends, go on dates with new girls, and everything felt like it was shifting back into place.

When I got back to home, though, the submerging into the unconsciousness of shame and doubt would continue. Some nights I’d be OK. I’d play a video game, listen to a podcast, or watch something on television to keep my mind at bay. Some nights, it’d be difficult; I’d lay awake, wondering if there would ever be a positive end to this long road of helplessness.

On one hand, 2018 was the worst year of my life. The only relationship I had this year ended in a possible world-record five days. I spent a good week in my bed, tears in my eyes, not wanting to do anything but seep further into the abyss. I had to go through therapy at a hospital that went on longer than a normal 9–5 work day. I dealt with a lot of pain and anguish in my personal life. Any time I felt like I had found someone that I thought could be a partner, I either screwed it up by being myself or watch them not have the same sort of feelings back.

It was hard. I hated myself a lot. I hated the world a lot. I hated my past a lot, and I hated why I let my past take control of me like a puppet so much. I wanted to be thankful for where I was in life after everything I’d been through, but it’s never so easy.

On the other hand, 2018 was the best year of my life. After deciding that I couldn’t let depression and missed connections ruin my life, I put everything into work the last half of the year. I grinded. Any time I was asked if I could do something or go somewhere, I said yes.

Starting from when I traveled to Chicago in July to interview Ninja and cover Red Bull’s Fortnite event in the Willis Tower, I didn’t stop hopping on planes. From Chicago, I went to New York City to do a live pre-show at Barclay’s for the Overwatch League final. From there, it was Seattle. Next, Bristol. Vancouver. Las Vegas. Oakland. It didn’t stop.

By the time I boarded my plane to South Korea for the League of Legends World Championship, I’d been probably home only two weeks out of two and a half months. In South Korea, I spent 41 days covering the largest video game tournament in the world. My feature and interview with Tyler1 went up one of the first days I got there, and I didn’t stop working from there. Every day I was trying to do my best from on-camera interviews to interviews to long-form features.

I love telling stories. I don’t care about views or praise or titles. I just really love getting people excited about what I’m excited about. I did these things when I was getting paid no money on Team Liquid back in the day when it was only a fan-site for StarCraft, and that hasn’t changed eight years later at ESPN, where I will begin my fourth year in a few days.

To me, writing is just an extension of myself. When I have a good story I want to tell, it doesn’t stop. It flows. Everything, from my surroundings, to the pain in my heart, to the swirling fog in my head, just vanish. All I care about is the story on the tip of my fingers and the rhythm bouncing through my body. There’s nothing better in the world for me than when I can finish a story that I feel proud of telling and can show the world what I created.

I remember back when I was a kid, probably 11 or 12, and I didn’t have an audience. I had no real friends. I was extremely sheltered. No siblings. I would just write stories on the notebooks that my grandmother would buy me. They would be trash, mostly ripoffs of anime I enjoyed like Dragon Ball Z or Yu Yu Hakusho. But I’d sit there and write these stories for hours upon hours, scribbling each detail by a character and mapping out all of these plot points that would go through years and years of this imaginary universe. Characters would go from being my age to having their own children. I guess I never thought I’d have a normal life growing up, so I wrote characters that could fulfill what I’d never accomplish.

No one read those stories except me. I didn’t need an audience. They made me happy. There would be days where I’d write these intricate imaginary worlds, battles and story arcs, and at the end, when I reached an end point, I’d throw everything away and start over with something new. I always had to have a new challenge. I’ve always wanted to tell a new story when the inspiration takes me.

That’s how I am today. Every day I get story ideas in my head, but unlike when I was a little kid, I can actually share what excites me. That, beyond everything else in my life, makes me happy. It makes me feel like I have a purpose, even when I’m not feeling the best.

If I could list the amount of people that made me feel happiness when I was at my lowest, no would be able to reach the bottom of the list. If there was ever a time this year that we had a conversation lasting over a few minutes in real life, then you helped me. I swear. Those moments, when I’m out in the real world, not stuck in my own head, are so damn precious.

It’s OK not to be OK.

Sometimes, I’m not OK. There have been times since I got back from South Korea and not working 24/7 where I delve back into the fog. I’ve had days where I do nothing but lay in bed and think about the days gone by. But that’s OK. I go to therapy once a week. If there is ever a time where I feel like I can’t get out of bed, I know it’s OK to tell people that.

Depression, anxiety, mental illness itself, is not a weakness. It’s not something to be embarrassed about. Lots of people have it. I’ve had people come up to me throughout the years, people that you’d never imagine, share that they’ve read some of my personal pieces and how it resonated to them because they also have depression or anxiety.

Going into 2019, I will continue being myself. I’m deeply flawed, but that’s alright. There will be days where I feel like the world’s walls are closing in on me, and there will also be days where I’m out with friends, laughing like the worst thing in the world is a wayward Tinder date. My goal is to make sure that the latter days outweigh the former.

Happy New Year’s.

Hopefully my next serious relationship lasts longer than a week.

No, seriously, let’s aim for eight days.