Pokémon has not only changed my life, but also saved my life. Pokémon gave me the motivation to get out of certain bad situations in my life and even changed my thought processes and worldview. For example, although I am slightly embarrassed to admit it because many people might say that it is just a video game and isn't that deep, but the storyline for Pokémon Black truly brought me to tears. In the past, I have been in situations where I gave up on life, assumed that life would only get worse in the future because of those situations, and even contemplated hugging a Bewear on occasion, mainly because I didn't think that I would last very long. I experienced those instances where I assumed that I struggled to fit in with my peers for whatever reason. Whenever I did try to make friends, I was usually constantly told, "Not now," or "maybe some other time," so a good chunk of my life was spent alone. On top of that, I had to deal with the passings of extremely close members of my family, such as my mother, cousin, grandfather, and grandmother. Imagine struggling to make friends and then losing your closest family members. Nowadays, it seems that the most I have is my father and older sister. At most, I thought that I only had acquaintances at best, but not true friends that everybody else seemed to have. To fill that void, I ended up entering a relationship that started off great, but eventually went sour. There was a lot of abuse there, mental, emotional, and physical, but because of my desperation to have a connection with someone, leaving felt impossible.
As I got a little older, in hindsight, I learned it was a relationship that never should have existed to begin with. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Game Freak creates a Pokémon game in a region based upon my hometown, something that I never thought I would ever see in any Pokémon game. As a result, I felt that had to pick up this game. Doing so resulted in me becoming highly interested in Pokémon. I began the story with my player character beginning their adventure with close friends, something that I desired. I picked Snivy as my partner, named her Ophis, and she evolved into Serperior overtime, which reminded me of all the people in my life that I was close to. Upon clearing the game for the first time after beating Ghetsis, N appears bathed in light and said something to me that really spoke to me, which was the quote, "Serenity! You said you have a dream… That dream… Make it come true! Make your wonderful dream a reality, and it will become your truth! Serenity! If anyone can, it's you! Well, then… Farewell!" That portion of the story and that quote actually made me cry, but it was hard to tell if they were tears of joy or sadness. Either way, it actually motivated me to make some changes and turn those bad situations in my life into good situations. Ever since then, my worldview has changed and things only seem to be getting better now. N said that quote after Ghetsis was revealed to have been manipulating him the whole time, which reminded me a lot of the relationship that I was in.
Well, Ghetsis being defeated and N saying his quote afterwards motivated me to get out that relationship and find greener pastures, which I did. When the story gets to the part where you choose Reshiram, or I should say, where Reshiram chooses you, the game actually helped me understand how to be true to myself. I guess you can say that the lore regarding Reshiram taught me something valuable, which is if my ideals aren't likely to be achieved in the way I want them to be, which was in my case, making more connections with people, I just need to learn to accept the truth and find other ways to be happy. As a result, even if I tried to make more friends and failed, doing so wouldn't bother me because I learned to accept myself for who I am no matter what. Shortly before my mom passed, she told me that she named me Serenity because she believed that once you find serenity in your life, then you find eternal happiness, and said that she found that when I was born. Well, ever since Pokémon entered my life, I believe that I found serenity as well just like my mom did because I am in a much happier place now. I guess you can say that Pokémon helped me find myself. 😊 Without it, I probably wouldn't be here today because I would have eventually gave in to those bad situations.
