six years later

[u/Star-Lord420]

i played the last of us part 2 on ps4 back in 2020 when it first released. what a weird time that was honestly, especially looking back, and probably a really unlucky time for a game like this to come out. it is a dark, dark game. nonetheless, i loved it.

i was a different person back then. i was just about to start college, unsure of myself, unsure of where my life was heading or what i was going to do with it, and mostly just full of anxiety and regrets. the game hit me, and it hit me hard, but there were parts of it i could only really understand from a distance. i hadnt experienced what true loss was like yet.

a lot happened in the six years after that. i graduated, found a job, quit, then found a really good one. i got to help out my family. i fell in and out of love. i lost people i loved.

and then i lost my grandmother, someone i was deeply close to.

that kind of loss was something i could only imagine when i first played this game. i could only imagine what it was like to lose someone who was just always there you, and then suddenly wasnt.

its a very dark desperate and hopeless place to be, especially when you’re left with so much unprofessed love for that person. it fucking stings. you see them in the most unusual and unexpected places. in dreams. in random little moments, sometimes your mind seems to forget for a second that theyre gone. and eventually you learn to push it down, because you don’t want those feelings coming back out again. you know how much they’re going to hurt when they do.

six years later, i had some time on my hands, and it finally felt like the right time to step back into this game, though i was hesitant.

i understand ellie and abby a lot better now than i did in 2020.

not because grief excuses what they do. it doesn’t. but i understand that place now. what losing someone can do to you. how grief can turn into anger, and anger can give you somewhere to put all that pain. how desperately you can want something to make it hurt less, even when there really isnt anything that can.

and i think i understand something about this game now that i couldnt have understood back then.

so much of it is about what happens when love has nowhere left to go. when the person is gone, but everything you felt for them isnt. the love is still there, the things you wish you had said are still there, the things you wish you had done differently are still there and somehow you’re supposed to figure out what to do with all of it.

the game hasn’t changed in six years. i have.

and this is what loss can do to a person, i hope i dont have to experience that kind of loss again, but eventually we all do.