How Minecraft and Splatoon stopped me from commiting

This might seem a bit silly, but minecraft and splatoon were the reason that I ultimately decided not to kill myself in fourth grade. 

Splatoon and minecraft were both my comfort games in 4th grade (when this took place), and they still are. Minecraft has always had some sort of nostalgic feeling to me. It was the very first game I ever got for my first console, the Wii U. I played it almost every other day, as I loved building anything as a child. It felt like I was in control of everything(I was a VERY bossy child), which made me ecstatic. Splatoon 2 introduced me to 3rd person shooters. This game was easy to make friends in, as the entire community was (and still is) very accepting of anybody.

In second grade, I was the semi-popular kid. Almost everyone liked me no matter what I said or did. I was around 7, so I didn’t really feel popular and just wanted everyone to be friends with me. Sadly, spring break turned into 2 weeks, then a month, then a whole year. Covid. Covid had kept me in the mindset that people didn’t mind when I talked, making me talk FOREVER. People ultimately didn’t like me for this, leading to me only having one friend. This didn’t stop me from talking though, the death comments were what ultimately led to me wanting to commit. I was curious if anybody at school really cared about me, so I asked a random girl if she would care if I went and committed scuicide, and she said something around the lines of “No, it would be a lot quieter here”. This made me really think about whether I should live or not. For some reason, I decided not to talk to my parents about this and kept this to myself. Before I was going to try to find weapons for SH, I found my switch rotting in the cabinet, and the Splatoon 2 cartridge was inside it. I charged it, and decided to play it. After the rounds, I would friend everyone that I played with, whether they were on my team or not. After friending 100 or so people, I realised that most of them weren't playing Splatoon. They were playing Minecraft. I then decided to sneak onto my mom’s switch and play minecraft there since I had restrictions on my switch. I kept doing this and started getting a lot happier. I totally forgot about harming myself. After a while, my switch stopped charging, and I got a new one that didn't have parental controls on it. I then started playing on that one, and was genuinely happy with life knowing that I actually HAD friends. I got caught around February (i think? This was a while ago anyway) and confessed to my mom about almost EVERYTHING that was happening at school, as it really was more than me not having friends and dreading school. I did not tell her that I was planning to hurt myself. (Who would want to hear their 9 yr old child say that anyway?) After that, my mom tried to make my school life easier, and I did learn how to be quieter. People still hated me, but I actually had friends outside of a console, which made me feel better about life. Around the middle of 5th grade, I totally forgot about harming myself and mentally improved. This was the grade I figured out I was gay, so my mental state wasn’t great, but it was WAY better than it was in 4th grade. 

I am now entering 8th grade and doing really well mentally (besides trying to figure out if i'm even a male or not). Life has gotten a lot better than it was 4 years ago, and I have actually made FRIENDS! Anyways, thank you for reading all of this! I almost cried knowing how lucky I am that I am still here on this earth because of a video game.