Retro Remorse

(Potentially triggering to those who grew up bullied or in toxic households)

My heart skips a beat as I pass the window showcasing the retro, cardboard cutout of my once favorited, blue, little speedster: Sonic the Hedgehog.

I was giddy with excitement as if I were once again six years old unwrapping the game’s box for the first time. That is until a sharp, stabbing pain in my side knocked the smile off of my face. 

My heart stops fluttering and shatters. Like a smoker who recently quit getting a whiff of the smoke trailing off of someone’s drag as they walk past, the sensation that comes from a glimpse into what life was once like comes with an overwhelming bittersweetness to it. My face lights up bright red as I remember the lonely addiction of my youth.

I dedicated my life to Sonic the Hedgehog. The games were my morning routine before school and they gave me something to look forward to when it was time to return alone to my empty home. 

Once I found out that there was a Sonic the Hedgehog comic book, you could forget it. 

I played through every game to full completion, unlocking every bonus stage, finding every easter egg that the developers put in for people like me, and beating every level in close-to-record time. Everything in my life except for the clothes I wore and the food I ate was Sonic the Hedgehog. There wasn't a second that went by where the thoughts in my head weren't about it.

The high-speed, attention-grabbing, heroic franchise was my escape from reality when mine wasn’t one of the best. 

I was basically an army brat minus having anyone in the service. 

I normally ate alone, did my homework alone, woke up, and got myself to school alone. 

I lived alone except for the ghostly, wheezing body of my mother that’d be slumped along the couch in the mornings with a bottle and a burned-out cigarette in hand. 

My mother was never around but when she was, it was never good. An alcoholic who worked two jobs just to keep herself distracted from hitting the bottle. She was bitter and several-times divorced, but that wasn’t the only reason why she was bitter.

She secretly had cancer. She never told me, but if her daily half-smoked pack of cigarettes and two empty bottles of wine didn’t allude to it, her Rudolph-esque nose, rosy cheeks, and constant phlegm-filled coughing gave away some kind of sickness. The kind of sickness that you couldn’t sleep off. Lord knows she could’ve used some sleep. But, she’d rather drink until her body couldn’t take anymore. 

We didn’t speak much. Nothing ever good came of it, so I asked her less and less questions over the years.

Whenever she was around, I was playing, winning, and she was drinking, losing.

She never cooked, so the freezer was also stocked with ready-made dinners.

I ate a lot of pizza. 

She only kept me fed as a legal obligation. Even then, eating the food in the fridge was seen as disrespectful.

I didn’t mind it when I was young. Though, the teasing and the ostracization from my peers was hard to cope with. 

Kids were never very accepting of “the new kid.” Especially not a pale, shriveled, shrimp who they couldn’t relate to at all. Everyone loved Pokemon cards. But, hardly anyone liked Sonic the Hedgehog. At least, not the way I liked it. 

The label seemed to follow me to every school I attended, no matter what town, city, or state it was in. Whenever I tried to talk to my desk neighbor in class, they either wanted nothing to do with me, or I’d blow it once I was asked about what I liked. 

How could I lie? I revolved my entire life around the one thing I liked.

I tried to lie to fit in, more than once. But, the illusion would crumble in on itself. You can only go so far in a conversation pretending to know what you’re talking about.

A lot of kids didn’t like the way I went about it. Looking back, I don’t like it either. 

In the Midwest, everybody talked about football and basketball. On the East Coast, it was baseball. Everybody had a sport or a hobby. 

Some kids were naturally funny or chatty. I never had someone who I could learn any of that from. I was awkward in the entirety of the word.

I only knew one thing.

I only cared about one thing.

I only had this one thing to my name.

I can still feel the bruises on my arms and ribs. 

I remember how I couldn’t breathe for minutes after being shoved straight into a locker. I remember trying to fight back with tears in my eyes while wincing and gasping for air. The floor rose to greet my face within the blink of an eye when I was knocked out. It hurt to chew for two whole weeks afterwards.

I didn’t have super speed or any spikes. I was a slow, little guy. I didn't know how to fight. I didn't want to fight. So, I accepted the fact that no one wanted to hear about what I had to say. 

The fast-paced, 2D, side-scrollers kept me company on the playgrounds that were filled with unfamiliar, devilish grins and the comic books kept me company in the cafeterias.

High school is where the real trouble began.

I didn’t have any relatable skills. I didn’t know how to run quickly or throw a ball. I had no charm. No good looks. No confidence. No friends. 

I didn’t belong to any clubs or extracurricular groups. I wouldn’t have been able to sign up, anyway, not knowing when I’d be leaving town to move to our next shitty, little, one-level house because my mom owed someone money that she couldn’t pay back or chose another scummy boyfriend who wouldn’t leave her alone. 

I never had a girlfriend or a boyfriend. As a kid, I never cared. In high school, my hormones forced me to care.

I would see couples in the hallways and on the streets after school walking hand in hand, with their arms wrapped around each other, going home together, talking and smiling. Always smiling.

After years of silence, I realized that I wanted to talk to someone, too. Anyone.

I wanted to tell someone about the bonus stages I unlocked, and the easter eggs I found, and the characters I related to. Anyone who cared to listen. 

Thank G-d for the internet.

One day after school, I grabbed my mom’s old, dust-blanketed laptop and started my search. I typed out, “Sonic the Hedgehog” and hit enter. There, on the second link, sat my first ever victory.

“The Sonic the Hedgehog Fan Page.”

Within one week, I was one of the top users.

I was on almost every forum available. I entered every chat room, commented on every blog post, and posted several of my own opinions and successes.

After school, I’d no longer meander around the playground aimlessly, imagining what life would be like with Sonic and his pals or longingly looking at groups of kids playing together from afar.

I was somebody.

One day, I stumbled upon another user’s fan fiction- a fictional, non-canonical story written about the characters from the games and comics. I was blown away by this new, super cool, extra piece of Sonic material. 

Immediately, I whipped up one of my own in an excited frenzy.

I created my own signature character and tied him into Sonic’s adventures with his pals to share with the others in my community. It received a lot of positive feedback. So, I started writing more, and more. 

After several volumes were posted, I had my own, small, community of users who all loved hearing what I had to say. I began to call them my friends and would have hours of fun and meaningful conversations with them.

I guess I started an upheaval of Sonic fan fiction. Several people were beginning to create their their own fan characters that went on adventures with my own and others as well as with the original gang. 

It gave me so much more content for the one thing I loved more than anything else. There came a time when there wasn’t a single minute when I wasn’t online with my friends.

It was what I’d been dreaming of for years. Now, it was my reality. It was fantastic! I felt good about myself for the first time in my life. I finally felt like I had somewhere that I belonged, where I could be myself, where people cared about me.

Sometimes, older users would print out stacks of the finished versions of their fan-fictions in an attempt to submit them to the game studio to be used in a future video game or comic.

That premise was so exciting to an unemployed, young fan of the franchise. I had no idea that it was even possible to get into contact with the Sega team, let alone attempt to turn a fan-made-character into an official member of Sonic's team!

What was even more exciting to me, though, was that this particular user had one of the powerful Chrystals from the game on top of his stack as a paperweight.

Intrigued and naive, I privately messaged him asking where he got his hands on this seemingly-impossible crystal.

"Ebay."

I saved up my pizza money for two weeks, rationing the little amount of frozen food we had to buy one for myself.

I don’t know what sparked the belief, but I thought that maybe this cheap, plastic crystal was a real one in disguise, waiting for me- a true fan with a pure heart- to have found it. 

I tried so hard to get it to work every day. I wished and prayed every night that it would take me and my new friends away to live in my newfound, perfect world. 

I didn’t want anything to do with the world outside of my community that I lived in.

I would have rather lost it all to start again fresh in Sonic's world.

I tried so hard to make it work every day.

One day, my mom had come home early from a shift. Whether she had gotten half the day off, been fired, or quit was beyond me. We hardly knew each other, after all. My guess was that she was fired.

As I was so far gone in this world I’d created for myself, I didn't hear her get home at all. But she could hear me.

She heard me shouting at the crystal, trying to activate its power.

I was screaming from the sheer effort that I was channeling into this shiny, plastic, promise.

She stormed upstairs, slammed open my door, and ripped it from my boney fingers.

It shattered against the wall as she threw it in disgust.

“I don't know why you think this make-believe world is real, but it just isn’t!” She screamed inches from my face, roaring hot, whiskey-ridden breath into my red-spotted face. 

"Two weeks of starving myself for this.”

She asked me where I’d gotten the damn thing from. In my shock and horror, I told the truth. 

“Ebay.”

She snatched the old, slow-running laptop from the corner of my bed and stormed out, slamming my thin, plastic door behind her.

That was the first time we spoke in months, and the last time we spoke for over a year.

That was the last time I ever spoke to my friends again.

That was the end of my illusion. 

With the only remains of my dystopia lying in pieces spread out over the floor, the veil of protection that I had over my circumstance was ripped away from me.

I was always bright. I was always aware of my situation; my social outcast, my lack of support, and my inner turmoil and depression that stemmed from it all.

But, now it was different.

I could no longer push down those feelings and hide them behind the bright colors and upbeat sounds of the game. 

It became agonizingly clear that, although partly due to the circumstances of the life I was born into, having never been able to put down any roots that would have helped me grow, this was my own fault. 

I sheltered myself in a made-up world and closed myself off from any experience that could have taught me how to adapt to the real word that I was sheltering myself from. 

I never cared to grow.

I never cared to try and relate to the others.

I never cared about anything more than the one thing I was addicted to.

I only cared to indulge in more of the poison that fed my sickness.

Now, because of my choices, there was no one in the universe that I could say loved me. 

The members of my community only knew me by my username, and my friends only knew my first name. It's a very common name, after all.

In realizing the weight of my undoing, I deemed the one thing that used to bring me joy and comfort as a waste of time. I was done with it all if this is what it was going to bring me.

That was it. No more Sonic the Hedgehog, which meant no more me.

That past lifetime of mine was abruptly killed alongside my innocence.

Within that instant, I was officially an eighteen year old adult with the fortitude of a child. A child who was never taught right from wrong, who had no guide or compass to help navigate the real world with, with no social skills or emotional wisdom.

I only had the knowledge gained from looking on from the side-lines at the world that I was begrudgingly born into; the one I wanted nothing to do with.

I had to start my life over from scratch with a broken heart and no idea how to mend it.

I was broken.

Now, as I pass by the GameStop to enter the grocery store, the smiling face of the spikey-haired, blue hedgehog only reminds me of the smile he held up on my own face to keep it from crying.