As if the whole game wasn't heartbreaking enough, they had to hit us with this train.
This took me back to my first playthrough. Story time:
I had recently graduated high school. My teenage mood swings combined with the trauma of losing the friends that I had known all my life made me really miserable. Though, I never acknowledged it, being the tough little man, I was really shaken.
In those days, LIS was the perfect game for me. I could relate to all of Max's struggles. A misfit in school who struggled to connect with people, hoping that she could fix everything by reversing time. The only difference between us was that she could actually reverse time.
It was heart-wrenching, and also comforting in a sense, that Max couldn't change much even by reversing time. With all her powers, she couldn't fix the onslaught of time. Just like me, she also felt trapped by her irreversible choices.
Like a kid refusing to grow up, she would countlessly go back in time, trying, trying to fix everything. Hopeless.
It was one slow evening, when I was faced with this choice, like a punch in the gut. But my choice was clear to me. It was just a matter of acceptance. I did what I had to, I killed my best friend, because I couldn't see her suffer.
As soon as I pressed the button, it all came back to me, one by one. My time with Chloe, the fun we had, and then I was reminded of the friends I had lost (to death or lost contact with), my high school; all like a past life.
A tear fell from my left eye. Then another. Soon, like a child refusing to be separated from his mother, I felt myself resisting this parting. Resisting losing Chloe, my high school, the few friends I had there, but most of all, I was resisting losing myself.
I was sobbing hard when the most random and frustrating thing happened, the lights went out and my mother walked into the room at that exact moment. Seeing me crying while sitting on an empty desk, she asked me out of genuine concern: "Are you alright? Why are you crying?".
I explained to her everything that had happened and SHE UNDERSTOOD! Never in my life, had I ever felt so SEEN.
She didn't think of me as a little bitch for crying on such little things. I would always downplay my problems, so I never shared them with anyone. But that was the first time I had ever felt seen. It was the beginning of change for me. It's easier for me to share things with people now.
My mother went on to finish the rest of the chapter with me, as I had to replay the whole thing due to the power outage.
Funny how such simple things can mean so much to us.
