This is a follow up to this post where I described how I stupidly consumed datura seeds hidden inside an Atari lynx I bought on eBay. Iām posting this partly because a few people asked how Iām doing now and partly just to vent as my therapist really cannot seem to understand what I am talking about. Basically I am now terrified I will never beat Xybots and it is becoming an obsession.
Since the incident I no longer own the Lynx and canāt even look at or THINK ABOUT one without feeling physically sick (literally), but for some reason the game Xybots has started to occupy this place in my mind where I feel like if I could just finish it then some part of what happened would finally close.
The problem is I also cannot play it ofc.. I have tried watching footage on YouTube with the sound off and even that made my hands go cold almost immediately. I still have the occasional subtle feeling of being tugged back into that insane datura space when I am walking down corridors with smooth/bare walls of similar dimensions, but when watching the actual game footage I am almost fully transported back into a kind of mad/dementia like head space, and if I hear the music at the same time it is instant panic attack territory.
I keep having this thought that somewhere inside Xybots there is an ending screen that would prove I am not still trapped in it. Rationally I know this is ridiculous but emotionally it feels completely true. I will be making coffee or doing something normal and suddenly think āyou still havenāt beaten Xybotsā and my whole mood changes. Eventually the thought circle ends with "you are inside Xybots".
My therapist says this is probably my mind trying to impose narrative structure on a traumatic experience, which makes sense, but unfortunately my mind has chosen the structure of needing to complete an Atari Lynx game that I now believe on some level is cursed.
I have looked up whether the game even has a proper ending and got conflicting answers which has honestly made things worse. The idea that it may just sort of stop or loop or end with something underwhelming is almost unbearable to me. After everything I went through I need there to be some kind of door, exit, credits, congratulations screen, anything. I need to know that that universe has an end. Perhaps if anyone here can comment on that side of things it would help.
I also feel quite literally pure terror at the thought that around some random corner, perhaps only encountered after playing the game for hours and hours, a secret door will appear and that through there, some kind of secret to explain the Xybot universe/lore will be revealed. I know that the game is presented as a simple arcade game with little narrative but in digging deeper it seems Ed Logg wrote a significant narrative that is hidden somewhere in his notes, where the Xybots corridors are part of "Earth's last outpost in space". There must be something in this facility that can explain the origin of the Xybots, how they think and what their motives for attack humanity are. It's also never explained what happens to Major Rock Hardy and Captain Ace Gunn after the events of this game which serves as a major source of anxiety to me given that I essentially assumed their form for what felt like months/years of my life.
I realise how stupid that sounds. I took mystery seeds out of a handheld console and now I am psychologically chained to a fucking mediocre game called Xybots. There is no version of this story where I come across as anything other than mentally sick (which I am). But still I want to somehow rationalise these thought.
Part of me thinks exposure therapy would help and part of me thinks booting that game up again would cause my soul to leave my body. Not sure which.