Elden Ring is the first FromSoft game I’ve played since my medical trauma. When the trailer was dropped at GeoffCon in June of last year, I could barely contain my excitement. I had all these grand plans as to how I was going to play it. I would have one character who was fire-based and did all the bosses solo, like I played all the games. I would also have another character, a strengthcaster, who would be used in multi play.
All that went out of the window when I ended up unconscious for a week in the hospital–and another week conscious to boot. I woke up with a new attitude about life–and Elden Ring. In general, I’m more able to not sweat the small stuff and find peace with lifelong issues.
The biggest issue is my body (and my face). I have had body issues all my life. It started when I was seven and my mom put me on a diet. She has her own body issues and she sent a constant message that a woman’s worth was one, based on her weight. Two, her ability to spawn children. Three, her ability to please a man. And, yes, it’s definitely a man, not a woman. In other words, the trifecta of sexist beliefs from the 1950s.
I’ve been fat most of my life, with the exception of the two times I was anorectic. Let me amend. I was not fat as a kid. I was chunky, yes, but not fat like I am now. Did my mother’s hyper-concern about my weight ever help me? No. Did it make me want to eat everything in sight? Yes. Did it add to my self-loathing? You bet!
And, no, it wasn’t a concern for my health because she said not a word when I was severely underweight from starving myself and blacking out while walking. OK, the latter only happened once, but once is more than enough.
I struggled with it for decades until I reached the point before going into the hospital where I was mostly neutral about my body. I didn’t hate it any longer, but I certainly didn’t love it. For the most part, I just tried to ignore it existed because I preferred not to think about it. Taiji is what helped move me from hatred to dislike to mostly neutral, but that’s where I was stuck. It was an uneasy detente in which neither of us acknowledged each other.