Dearest Stacey Rockford,

Thank you for reminding me what I had lost there for a while, almost forgotten in the ocean of shame I (and most people) carry within myself. This part of me that the person I once loved said made me “too much to bear” after breaking up, and just like most wounded, heartbroken people, I subconsciously buried that part of me, almost like it didn’t exist.

Like you, I, too, understood, judged, and processed the world through music for the longest time. I, too, got the panic when I removed my headphones, and experienced the loud mundanity of the world without a soundtrack.

Like you, I needed music every fleeting second, not just to make life feel ambitious and cinematic or to seek comfort, but for direction, because, as you said, when you pick the right song, it holds you in the moment, it gives it meaning, but more so because the music is going somewhere and you’re going with it.

I was this way my entire life. I needed the headphones when I woke up. I needed it before bed. I needed it when I was heading out. I was always following the footsteps of music, and while I shifted gears with the right track, it was the track itself that steered the wheel of my life.

Like you, I have met people like Jenny fucking Goodspeed who didn’t understand music, or people who didn’t care what they listened to, or worse, people who listened to music I couldn’t stand. And yes, like you, their appreciation or understanding of music or the kind of music they are into, told me everything I needed to know about them.

Music was always the first thing I would talk to a stranger about. It’s through music that I resonated with others, myself, and other forms of art, including video games. There’s a reason Skyrim, Life is Strange, and Persona 5 are some of my favourite games of all time.

Like you, every connection in my life began or was strengthened by a shared understanding or affection for music. There was simply no other way around it.

Like you, I had a playlist for every occasion, a track for every moment, and I needed to follow the right order with these to make sense of things. And true enough, that made me a difficult person to be around at times because I was quick to judge and was less tolerant of people who didn’t get my immense need to play or listen to the right music at the right time.

Maybe because I’m not a teenager or a young adult anymore, or maybe after what happened last year, I have become more lenient, since someone who I bonded with through my favourite band turned her back on me and said I was too much for having a song for every situation.

It didn’t occur to me until I met you through Mixtape that I’m not too much; all this time, I was simply charting my way through life the only way I knew how to.

So thank you for reminding me about this precious part of me that I had lost in the disguise of grief and growing up. And for allowing me to reminisce about this lovely friend of mine who loved every mixtape I had ever made and wholeheartedly believed I would make for an excellent “playlist curator”, if such a job existed. Thank you for reminding me that I have had people before who loved me for the way I am, and for making me believe that I’ll find them again by being myself.

Next time, if someone tells me I’m overbearing or asks why there is a need to have a song for every moment or a series of mixtapes for every season of life, I’ll simply smile and quote you, “because pretty soon, you won’t be listening to music, you’ll be listening to who you were.”

There were signs everywhere I looked. It was in the blue curtains which half-heartedly covered the blue lights of the horizon. The untucked blue bedsheet that reeked of attention.The blue chapter of the impromptu book I had picked up to read at the blue hour.

I realized it was inevitable. I had avoided it for five months, and it all came back to me, ironically, in the month I refer to as the season of death. So, without any more delays, let me talk about Persona 3 Reload.

Did you know that blue is the color of death? I discovered this bizarre fact about five years ago in a random email I read in Death Stranding. Crazy, right? It’s crazy how games can teach us so many trivial things.

Video games have always been my favorite subject, and the Persona games have been my favorite teacher for a while now. So it’s no surprise that when I got the opportunity to review Persona 3 Reload — the remake of 2006’s Persona 3 — earlier this year, I was ecstatic but nervous. It was the only game in the franchise I had yet to experience, and I was ready to get my mind blown away.

I wasn’t a stranger to P3’s status. After all, it was the game that redefined this franchise. If you don’t know anything about Persona, think of it as the eldest son/daughter of a household, and you will know what I mean. Some hardcore Persona fans still believe it tells the most compelling story of all Persona games.

Suffice it to say, I was excited to experience Persona 3 in all its glory in Reload, which Atlus kept calling a “reimagining,” not a remake of the original. Despite the hype, I tried to keep my expectations in check because I had been let down by a reimagining before *coughs Resident Evil 2 remake*.

Long story short, Persona 3 Reload didn’t blow my mind away. Yukari and Junpei didn’t become my new best friends. I didn’t hopelessly fall in love with Aigis or Mitsuru, and Ryoji was nowhere near as charming as a villain as Akechi.

Sure, its story felt more grounded and believable than other Persona games, but it wasn’t impactful. It didn’t teach me anything. I learned nothing from it. Or at least, I thought so.

In my review, I called Persona 3 Reload a “surprisingly inadequate remake that feels like a first draft of the intricately crafted stories, characters, and social sim elements of latter Persona games.”

It took me 75 hours to roll credits in Persona 3 Reload and then about 12 hours to pen down its review. Since then, I haven’t booted up the game. But, as fate would have it, I haven’t stopped thinking about it.

Persona 3 is a game about living, which inevitably makes it a game about dying. The splash of blue in the UI and the protagonist’s eyes and hair aren’t coincidental. Every prominent Persona 3 character has lost someone and it’s their survivor’s guilt that gets them all together. They are all lonely, and they are all trying to survive.

I have been lonely all my life. I felt less lonely when I played Persona 5 for the first time. In it, I found friends I wanted to spend my time with. Friends I wanted to cherish and protect. In Makoto Nijima, I felt I had found my soulmate.

I remember spending New Year’s Eve at LeBlanc with Makoto when she humbly said, “I want to support you, especially when you’re hurting. We can get through our problems together.” I got shivers down my spine. She was the green flag I had yearned for my whole life.

Persona 5 offered me everything that I had ever wanted to. It made me feel less lonely. It was like a sweet strawberry dream.

On the other hand, Persona 3 made me feel the opposite. In my review, I mentioned how lonely I felt navigating the first 15–20 hours of Reload since Yukari and Junpei’s social links weren’t available from the get-go. At the time, it felt like the most negative criticism I could come up with about a game all about forming connections.

However, thinking about it now, it makes a lot of sense. Persona 3 wanted me to feel lonely. Poor writing and character development aside, this game was trying to be more realistic in its approach to how we form bonds with other people, unlike most anime and anime-esque modern video games that rely heavily on widely acknowledged tropes and fan service.

Persona 3 wasn’t going to let me live a harem fantasy where every character’s life revolved around me. That doesn’t happen in real life.

And then it occurred to me. The reason why I couldn’t embrace Persona 3 like I did Persona 5 was very simple. Persona 5 wanted me to strive, whereas Persona 3 wanted me to survive.

I have spent 26 years striving for things I couldn’t get. I have often blamed my failures and sufferings on my inadequate luck. I’ll probably never find friends or a soulmate who meets my expectations. I must do with what I have and make the most out of it. In other words, I must survive. Persona 3 involuntarily taught me that.

And that is what I have been doing since Persona 3 Reload was released. I was let go from my full-time job a day after this game came out. I also lost someone I knew to a car accident that same week.

Back then, I had friends I could talk to, but their lives didn’t revolve around me. They couldn’t be with me in everything. Nor was I close enough to them to blatantly open up about my feelings, just like I couldn’t with Yukari and Junpei in the game. No, this time, I had to accept things instead of complaining or striving for something better.

When that idea started sinking into my consciousness, I started understanding and appreciating Persona 3 Reload for what it was. Make no mistake, its flaws hadn’t become flawless in my mind. I had just accepted them as an inevitable fate of life.

Akihiko, Aigis, Amada, Fuuka, Mitsuru, Junpei, Shinjiro, and Yukari might not be the “kind” of friends I was looking for, but they are the ones I found and I cherish the time spent with them. Whether it was cooking with Yukari, drinking tea with Mitsuru, or simply taking Koromaru for an evening stroll.

Sure, I craved those game nights with Futaba and date nights with Makoto, but I accepted that in this reality, things weren’t going to turn out that way, and I had to make do with it.

In the last six months, that idealogy has carried over to my real life, and I have spent more time hanging out with people who look out for me and are kind to me, even if we have not much in common and are on a different spectrum of lives. Perhaps we are connected in the same way fate connected Yuki to the SEES members despite their dissimilarities.

In the past, I would have shrugged, complained about my rotten luck, shut myself in, and played the victim card. I still do that sometimes, but mostly, I try to push back. I don’t let the door shut. As Mitsuru says, “To truly live is to be willing to change. And we have to make those choices for ourselves.”

I realized I couldn’t stop thinking about Persona 5 because it felt unreal. I once gleefully told a friend that I only spent the required amount of time in the real world. That’s how I kept myself sane for most of my life. But now that bubble has broken, I have had to make amends and dip my toes into the cold stretches of reality to survive.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Persona 3 because it feels too real. And this year has been nothing but real, not just for me, but hundreds and thousands of people who have lost their jobs in games development and games media.

But as much as games have given us a reality check, it’s also what keeps us going. Not a week has passed since January when I haven’t listened to “Burn My Dread” before starting a leg press rep in the gym.

It’s the exercise I fear the most, and nothing pushes me to overcome that fear like Azumi Takahashi’s throbbing voice in my head screaming and shouting, “I once ran away from the god of fear, and he chained me to despair.” It’s almost become a ritual at this point.

As much as flawed and inconsistent Persona 3 Reload is in expressing its sentiments, it’s also always unabashedly determined to do just that. And I guess at the end of the day, that’s what matters in real life: an unwavering will to fight even the god of death alone or with people who show up, not the ones who you wish would show up. Persona 3 Reload gave me this reality check.

As I write this final paragraph, I put on “I Will Protect You” from Persona 3 Reload on Apple Music. The gentle piano score calms me. I feel a slight lump in my throat. I close my eyes and take a deep breath.

God, I miss them. Akihiko, Aigis, Amada, Fuuka, Mitsuru, Junpei, and Yukari. Ann, Akechi, Makoto, Mona, Futaba, Haru,Ryuji and Yusuke. I miss them all.

Now, if you will excuse me, I’ll go play Episode Aigis, reunite with my fictional friends, make some memories, and shed more tears.