hate when men have big beautiful brown eyes like a baby cow . shut up

Animal Crossing: a Spoonie in Wonderland

I'm terrible at video games. I've tried all kinds of them, and I just can't seem to keep up in any of them. I played Ocarina of Time all the time as a kid, but I was reminded recently that I never got past the relative beginning. I just get frustrated and end up throwing the controller across the room. I know ADHD has something to do with that, and now that I have brain fog to deal with from fibro, it's basically hopeless.

The only game that has ever clicked for me is Animal Crossing. When I was a kid we had the Gamecube version. I had this vicious cycle of becoming totally obsessed with it, then realizing it had taken over my life, selling the game and the console, then eventually missing it and buying it all over again. Repeat repeat repeat.

So when they came out with the phone version, I held out for as long as I could. Animal Crossing I can carry with me all the time? Dangerous. Very dangerous. But I got it eventually. And when they did a big update and I couldn't use it on my phone anymore because there wasn't enough storage, I got a new phone. It's a problem.

I love this game. It's not exciting like many other games. You spend most of your time catching fish or bugs or decorating your campsite. But as a spoonie, those are things I have a hard time doing IRL. I don't have the energy to run around planting flowers or harvesting fruit.

Being as obsessed with clothes as I am, I can change my outfit as often as I want! And they have all these events going constantly that keep it interesting, like fishing tourneys or scavenger hunts. Sometimes they do crossovers or themes like Sanrio characters, Mario, or Alice in wonderland.

I can be as cute as I want and do as many activities as I feel like without worrying about my energy level or constant pain. I imagine that a lot of spoonies use video games to cope with limitations put on us by our health problems. In my case, maybe I'm not dreaming too big, playing a game about camping when I could be in a fantasy world or something grander, but this makes sense to me. It fulfills my cravings for an active lifestyle without actually having one. I'll admit there's even a small, quiet part of me that likes seeing a little version of me without mobility aids. I'm trying to get over that shame, though.

Animal Crossing is a way for me to cope with how small my world has become --by having another semi-realistic small world in my pocket. It's not a big world, but it's a bigger world than my bedroom. To me, that makes it paradise.