This Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for Persona 5

This article contains discussion of self harm.

Whenever I encounter a difficult time in my life, I always make a meaningful effort to reflect on as many positives as I can. My health is good — I have no aches, pains, or injuries — and I have a place to live, can afford my necessities, have a good relationship with most of my family, and so on. Games might sound like a trivial or superfluous thing to include compared to those things, but over time, I have only found more reasons to be grateful to have them in my life.

Between the current political and social landscape, mixed in with the winter holidays, I have been trying to be as proactive as possible to preserve my mental health. While they’re not what I rely on exclusively, I have recognized games as a major component in that pursuit. They have helped me in the times when I have been so close to giving up on hope. They have also been there to cement the best moments in my mind and allow me to relive just a fraction of those feelings. Games have completely changed the trajectory of my life, but even ignoring that, I would still be just as thankful for them for the lessons I was able to teach myself through them.

Aside from the fallout of my parent’s divorce, one of the lowest periods of my life came in the winter of 2017 to 2018. I had graduated college a few years earlier, and the only job I had been able to find was working in a warehouse and as a delivery driver for a sandwich shop — not quite the life I had imagined for myself. Feeling dejected and hopeless hunting for a better job, I made a snap decision to move to a small town in southern Colorado near my two siblings.

This turned out to be the worst choice of my life.

It seems obvious in hindsight, but the job opportunities in a town of under 20,000 people are considerably worse than in a major metro area. I ended up in a small, two-room apartment with subflooring instead of a real floor that was perpetually cold in the winter. It didn’t help that I was so poor I couldn’t run my heat, forcing me to bundle up in shoes, socks, sweaters, a hat, and a blanket at all times. I was also suffering a drastic hormone imbalance that I couldn’t convince any doctors to test for. The icing on the cake was the only freelance job I could find wrecked my already fractured morale.

I spent my days listening and transcribing police recordings for what worked out to be around half of the minimum wage. I listened to children describe their abuse at the hands of adults, and terrified victims hiding in closets, bedrooms, and bathrooms from intruders, begging for their lives to be saved, while I sat freezing and on the verge of starving day after day. Something was going to give inside of me.

Not long before I was ready to make a catastrophic decision, I got an email. It was from IGN informing me that I had won a giveaway one of their podcasts had set up in preparation for God of War‘s launch a few months later. My prize? A $100 PSN card.

Had this prize come in any other form, I would have never allowed myself to “waste” it on a video game. Food, rent, heat … I had too many things higher up on the priority list for which that money could’ve been used. Because it was PSN credit, I was able to buy something “nonessential” without guilt. As it turns out, nothing else could’ve been more essential at that moment.

What I chose was Persona 5. I didn’t pick it because I was looking for a game to drag me out of my depressive spiral. No, like so many others in similar situations, I chose this RPG because I wanted to get as much bang for my buck as possible. I knew the game had gotten amazing reviews, and I loved Persona 4 years before, but it was that over-80-hour playtime that made me pull the trigger on it over other options.

Dozens of videos and essays have pontificated on and praised this game from every angle, not least of which are its themes. What I can add to the conversation is my personal experience with this world. Everything about the game, from its subject matter and characters to its structure and style, was exactly what I needed at that point in my life. It told me to take my time. It gave me something to look forward to, characters I felt connected to, and real challenges I could overcome. It made me smile. But most of all, it gave me hope. Hope that I could break free from my cycle of despair. Hope that I could find and embrace my true self. Hope that this wasn’t the end.

Persona 5 changed my heart. It gave me the support and perspective I needed to keep going — keep fighting — through that dark time I wasn’t sure even had an end. If games could get me through that, I know they can help me now.

A game doesn’t need to completely change your worldview for you to be thankful for it. Those kinds of experiences, where you find the perfect game at just the right (or wrong) time in your life, may only happen a handful of times. I am thankful for games for all the small moments just as much as the big ones.

I will always remember the morning I was brought downstairs a few weeks before my birthday and saw three big Blockbuster boxes with three rented Nintendo 64 games in them — something borderline impossible in my childhood mind. Or how I will always associate Banjo Tooie with that one Christmas morning playing in the living room with my brother plucking away at his guitar, and my mother, sister, and father hanging out in the kitchen making cinnamon rolls. It is impossible to play a second of that game and not get hit with a sudden warmth rushing me back to that day.

Even moments I can’t pick out from my memory where games were simply a temporary escape are treasured ones.

This is why I am so thankful for games and try to share their stories. No matter what stage of life I’m in, I know I can count on them to give me exactly what I need. To me, they have become an essential part of my mental health.