#accepting yourself

You start in the usually vaguely-medieval setting. There are a lot of NPC's, and they are very clear about your objectives - you need to get to the end castle and defeat the enemy. Prove your worth. Straightforward. If you follow their instructions, it's a reasonably short game of increasingly difficult enemies until you fight the end boss, and take your place on the wall of heroes. All the heroes look similar to you, though if you look closely, they start much smaller and grow. Their expressions also get more subdued.

You start again at the beginning. Game difficulty has ramped up. A few of the paths have become obstructed. NPCs are a bit more demanding. The world has less complex visuals. It's technically possible to play through 4 times to get the bad ending. But the 4th is punishingly hard, everyone is vicious, and the whole world is grey. All the mobs are ridiculously strong, and you are weaker. When you restart for your fifth round, your character keeps pausing, keeps sitting down, and eventually the game fades out. The end screen tells you to keep going.

There are other weird things, right from the beginning.

You have a screen for objectives, and it updates when you talk to NPCs, but doesn't quite match what the NPCs are saying. If you ignored NPC dialogue, you'd think the game was about rescuing someone at the castle and saving the world. The win screen suggests you did this, and doesn't even mention proving yourself, but there isn't any other indication of a prisoner at the castle, or the kingdom in danger.

Also, the NPCs are REALLY discouraging of side quests and exploration. Their dialogue gets more and more hostile if you leave the main path, or build up stuff in your inventory. And the main path has a lot of fighting, but the rest of the world is mostly environmental puzzles.

There are blobby ghost things if you do explore. Some of them run from you, or hide behind barriers. Others give you side quests to collect sets of items, or visit random locations. A few drop their own inventory and apologize for having the items before running away.

It's pretty easy to get sets of items, or get notified that you found X location. Finding which ghost wants what is a bit harder, though. There are a LOT of ghosts. And not all the ghosts will let you approach them, at the beginning.

If you complete a side quest, the ghost transforms into a version of you. You merge. It starts providing commentary, on the side of screen. And the world transforms, slightly.

Usually it's just a cosmetic change. More trees, the buildings get more stained glass and pretty tiles, etc. But sometimes you get new movement options, or types of items. Every few completed quests, the ghosts get more detailed, until the map is populated with versions of you, doing various things. They no longer run. They're playing with their collections of stuff, sitting in scenic locations, building ridiculous contraptions. Some wave when you walk past, or follow you for a short distance, bombarding you with dialogue.

The parts of you that you've absorbed provide worldbuilding, tell you how cool various things you pass are, give you advice for completing quests. They tell you to ignore what the NPCs say. Most of the NPCs act the same, but some get worse and some get nicer. They still redirect you to the main quest. Some parts of your character think the main quest is pointless, others think it is important, but most of them don't want you to do it. Some of them act guilty about this.

Eventually, smaller castles open up. You can beat them, and the game will restart without amping up the difficulty or resetting anything. You can also ignore them, and just collect all 64 types of tree seeds. You've already done that, but you get really happy commentary every time!

There's never a way to 'beat' the main castle without making things worse. But if you sneak in with the right items, you're able to transform some of the wall of heroes. They merge with you like the ghosts, and each time you get a 'death' screen, telling you that the hero was lost and the world is going to fall into ruin. (It doesn't.)

The final state isn't an end. You can endlessly collect items. You can defeat castles. You can get alternate tilesets from some ghosts, so you play in scifi, Classical Greek, etc. settings. But every time you quit, the screen fills with words from parts of you - thanking you, saying goodbye, and telling you things are good.

-

Then I started yearning for more. To get more than just participation, more than just honorable mention. I did good, but I wanted to better. 

So I signed up for more competitions. I went for anything the school offered. Every competition dangled in front of me, every little opportunity to show off.

But somewhere along the way, my competitions stopped being about showing off and started being about proving my worth. Pride turned to insecurity and joy turned to anxiety and self-hate. Silver? How dare I not get gold! I was furious. I felt like a letdown. I won an entire competition, and I felt nothing but frustration at being near the upper end of the age limit. In my anger and hurt, I took to... More competitions. Anything to prove I was really, truly perfect.

That was a mistake. The parasite of perfection had glutted itself on my not-quite-wins, and it was not enough anymore. It was never enough. And now a bronze was worthless, and made me worthless. A silver was dissatisfactory. I had to get a gold, in everything and against all odds. In retrospect, it was getting ridiculous. Unattainable. But I had the bit of victory between my teeth, and I simply could not let go. 

But all highs must become lows, and my high tower of obsession and desperation came crashing down eventually. 

You see, my life had become a competition, and my happiness the grand prize. Or so it seemed to be at least. But that was just a lie. I would never be happy. Not with a silver, not with a gold, not even with all the golds in the world. I was not perfect, and I would never be the best in everything. Trying to convince myself otherwise was an exercise in futility. So I hit the brakes. Decided enough was enough. I was done with crying over being less than perfect. I had done enough. I had done well.

I will be frank here. Acceptance is hard. It feels like giving up, surrendering yourself to a life of mediocrity. It feels wrong, weak and cowardly. But every time I cursed myself for being a gutless wimp, I remember the alternative. I remember the insatiable greed of the parasite, feasting on my hopes and dreams. I remember that this is not giving up.

 It is saving myself before it becomes too late.

I didn't change immediately. I sulked over every 3rd and 2nd in class I got. I grouched over every trivial error I made. But the anguished agony of imperfection faded to a disgruntled ache with time, and I found myself, if not accepting my imperfections, then at least tolerating them. Maybe someday, I will get a silver in something and feel nothing but triumph. Because then I will truly have understood: