HSP-Em Writes

The game is mostly about my recent stint in the hospital back in June and the nature of having a body which has never been healthy. It's about one hospital stay, but really, it's about the cycle of health and the way it can continuously fail, just as it has since the moment you were born. It's why the game loops. It's one hospital visit after another. I know the local hospitals like I know the back of my hand and I can give detailed reviews about each one. I could also give you doctor recommendations for almost any local specialist. I don't have a single organ that doesn't operate at least slightly wrong at this point.

I don't really like to talk about health things. It's exhausting, the typical reactions are exhausting, and at some point I figured it was better to go along with the idea that "Yes, I'm totally fine post hospital visit. Don't even worry about it." and let everyone feel relieved they don't have to think about it anymore. 

But that doesn't change reality, and there was something about this last visit that felt like the final nail in the coffin for me. Perhaps it's because I had my health issues managed for most of my twenties, or perhaps it's because there is something about being hospitalized that reduces you back to the scared child you never wanted to be again, but I just kept dwelling on it in a way I hadn't before. Maybe all those years of denial about my health finally gave way to anger or grief or both. Either way, I needed some way to process it.

So yeah, Day 8. It's a pretty short game, but it did help, in a lot of ways. Despite the limits of both decker and O2A2, I spent a lot of time making each scene look how I felt.  I think my favorite scene was the one where my head was cut off:

I actually did that by accident (erasing my head), but the second I did I was like "Oh, yeah, it's just that." It was the erasure of my identity, which I felt in a lot of ways. Whenever people came to visit, they were so focused on the pain, on how to make sure not to make things worse, on the doctor's orders, I became only that one thing. Isn't it wild how others people concern and empathy somehow manages to reduce you to nothing?

Anyway, I had a lot of things to get off my chest. And I will also probably never make something like this again. Making this game actually helped a lot, shockingly enough. It felt like cracking open my skull and shaking the goop out. My health isn't anywhere near recovered (it's uh, getting worse actually lmaO), but I've come to accept the slew of doctors appointments and tests I'm going to have to get done. I've done it before, I'll do it now, and I know I'll have to do it endlessly into the future as well. It is what it is at this point.

I would also like to share the non pixelated version of my little character sprite because it was literally just the messiest doodle in the world. Sometimes, unpolished work works just as well:

I doodled that in about 10 minutes and called it a day LOL 

Anyways, I'm hoping to get back into making things again and also feeling ok with posting them on here. It's been...kind of a long time at this point, and it's been consistently rough for a few years now, but I at least don't want to lose my creative spark. But yeah, if you played Day 8, thanks. I'm hoping to get back to my other in progress works, although at this point, no promises on anything. When things happen are when they happen. 

I'll see you guys next time, whenever that may be.