My Real Family:
Around the year 2011, there was an average teen 16 year old troubled teen, who was not very fond of studies, things that required too much memorizing or analyzing like math and science; and unfortunately, his social skills in real life were somehow bad, due to his low self-esteem he could not manage to get many friends either. On the other hand, he excelled in the world of videogames. That person started to play online games in his free time, but he did not know what he would get himself into. That person was me, Hector.
This began on a cold night of December, Christmas dinner had already pass, and Hector had just been yelled by his mother, because he hated family gatherings, because he does not like to get around with the family during holidays, he hated how everyone wore masks when together, hiding all the distain and hypocritical intentions from everyone, aiming for a perfect dinner with the family while wearing fake smiles on their faces, that were not worth a penny. Slammed his room’s door as loud as possible, making its relatives think that he wanted some time alone, then proceeded to relax, turns on his computer, headphones with his favorite music, and starts to watch series on the internet. An advertisement caught his attention while watching one of his favorites series that said “Play for Free!” which was a very attractive one, Hector clicked on the ad, signed up for an account and finally started playing.
Everything was going smoothly, was deliberated as a way to get out of his problems, every time he felt unloved, he knew he could start playing, escaping from reality and putting his mind into something else “Elsword”,barely having friends, (Those you can actually call friends) not having the warm feel of your family, someone to love, made him feel blue; depressed, thinking about what was he going to do with his life, because school was not an important matter to him, he even had vague thoughts about cutting himself, and suicide. There thoughts did not last long after thinking it over.
The game had a feature where you could invite people to play with you, a recruiting system, meaning that the more players that interacts with you in-game the better the virtual rewards you could get. Hector started playing under the name of “Renki”, he was a newbie and barely knew anything about the game, so he joined a group that were from “Panama” he thought that people who spoke his native language (Spanish) would be kind and helpful to enjoy this game the most, they were very cool to hang out with: the happiness Renki was feeling could be noticeable miles away, he thought about them as his second family.
Renki felt loved, and motivated to keep studying, his school grades increased significantly as well as his addiction to the game, might had increased because of the interaction with other people, even if they were not next to him, however not everything was joy and sweetness there were discrepancies between comrades in this group, which led Renki and his friend Ethan to leave, and started looking for more groups were they could learn more, joined many but none had what Renki was looking for, was still reminded about what he did not like about his friends arguing about a game matter, bad memories shouldn’t be reminded too much or the pain will get into our hearts, and decided to keep looking for different “families” to see which one he could fit in.
Renki finally found one its name was “NetBattlers”, was a very lively family, an amazing place with caring people, he enjoyed his time spent in there, (stayed more than a year) back then it was so active that he could not wish for more, until people seemed to get busy with life; when he had so much free time, the good thing is that he knew very valuable people, learnt from others to value life, also identified what could be troubles for other members. He made his own family after seeing what lacked in others, it was hard to keep the amount of members, but it paid off. The fact that he gained trustful friends was assuring, they came from different places: Russia, Holland, Portugal, Japan, Romania, Canada, Australia, United States and more.
2016, the group is still running and Renki tries his best to preserve the peaceful days of his stay in this game along with his comrades.
-DarkRenki
