Banging My Head On The Ceiling

For a while I wasn’t sure why I keep playing Street Fighter V.

Enjoyment isn’t a word I would use to describe my feeling with this game.

Frustration seems fitting as I spend more time yelling at my TV while playing online instead of enjoying.

I often utter “Good Game” after losing repeatedly. And this is stupid simply for the fact that the person who won and is miles away from me, can’t hear me say it because I’m not chatting with them as they pummel my feeble attempts at playing.

“Good Game” is said for the same reason a Preacher might say “God Forgive Me!” after someone cuts him off and takes the parking spot he was eyeing in a Christmas Season mall parking lot.

It’s the ending to a personal verbal tirade and a reset to lost human sensibility while swaying on tilt.

You can’t just tell someone to eat a bag of dicks after saying “Good Game,” because then, no matter how much your gritted teeth poison the saying of “GG’s”, any ill intentions to immediately follow will have lost much of their venom.

I know this only because I’ve lost enough times at this damn game to basically have a PH.D in Salt Intake.

Clearly I don’t love this game.

I like it.

But I hate it too.

And it’s at this point I find myself wondering why the hell do I keep playing this game.

Why not move on  and try to play more of Mortal Kombat, or Tekken, or just say to hell with Fighting Games and go back into the wacky world of JRPG’s or QTE-laden Action Titles.

And it hit me recently in the midst of losing yet again to Cross-Ups, Throws, Frame Traps, and the occasional Raging Demon–F*ck you Akuma player #345…Good Games my dude–that the reason I keep playing Street Fighter V is because I’ve clearly hit my own ceiling.

And I want to bust through it so badly because it’s the only ceiling I feel I can break.

Look, I don’t have any rose-colored dreams about becoming a major success with unconditional love, support, and a bitchn’ Credit Score.

Those notions of owning a home or having the body of a Apollo Crews, or having an actual career instead of a low-paying slave working gig in retail flew out the window several years ago as my expectations out of life dwindled more and more.

I’m now in my early 30’s, seemly forever stuck in a hometown I swore in my teens to leave and never come back to again. I’ve bounced between living with roommates to back among my parents’ dwelling like some bottom feeding parasite. I’m burning bridges and crumbling friendships and relationships with people, I conned into giving a damn about me, because I still haven’t figured out how not to be such an introverted piece of shit bastard to them in one form of another. I’m unable to help them cope with their own demons because my man-child ass can’t seem to really help myself.

And my self-loathing increases exponentially every time  I refuse to drive myself off a bridge and into a lake on my way to work because I literally had a shortcut available but had to be a coward and take the long way.

I don’t say any of this to ferret some sympathy.

And advice could be given to someone more deserving.

I’ve accepted my place, and know that the only real best case scenario I have in all of this, is putting the student loan debt collectors on speaker phone while I hang myself, and becoming some New York Times think-piece that gets dissected, misread, and bashed to shreds on Facebook and Tumblr.

The ceiling on life is so low and impenetrable that I wake up everyday with a crick in my neck.

And deep down, it’s because of that ceiling I have this obsession with breaking the ceiling for some dumb fighting game.

I can’t quit SFV.

Besides, I just picked up Nash and his school outfit.

I mean…Swag.