When I was 13 I had a series of difficult life events for me at the time. I don`t want to talk about specific situations which have happened, but I quit socializing with friends and family, I had trouble with eating, and I quit doing anything. And that period of time lasted until I was 16 years old, and then I was so exhausted that I just made up a world for myself where I could escape from it all. I asked for a gaming laptop for my 16th birthday, under the pretext that it was for studying. But for myself I realized that I would just start to play and hide from everything going on around me.

 

And at first I found interesting games, in which I killed time, but I felt much better. That's how my leisure time went until by chance I started to communicate with people in games. And I want to say that I had a completely different idea about people who play. I thought that they were all negative and would judge me for every mistake, so I always tried to avoid any communication as much as possible. Of course there are a lot of such people, but It was for my surprise when I met people who didn't know me, but supported me as if they were my closest people. That's how my first changes came about, I played not only to escape from reality, but also to be able to talk to people. In this way I made many friends who are still close to me, even though I have never even met them. This communication and all our conversations made me feel better and slowly I started to come to my senses.

 

This was the checkpoint after which I started to fight myself to get out of this state. In small steps and long distances I managed to do it. Of course, some problems and traumas still resonate somewhere in me, but I always try to work through everything and not let it go to waste. For me at that point in my life, it was a kind of salvation and a realization of how important people are in life, and no matter how strong you are, you can't always do it alone. The ironic thing is that everything happened when it was supposed to happen. That's the way I guess of how the universe treat people. Before the war started, I started interacting with a lot of foreigners in games, even though I had avoided them before, and it was thanks to this that I was able to somehow communicate in Europe for the first time after moving there. It helped me to have some minimal English base, and the ability to understand different accents. Anyway, to summarize, gaming for me is like my own personal little story and world. A place where I can relax and clear my head, and just as importantly, spend time with my close friends and having fun together.