Was feeling a little dizzy earlier today so naturally I spent the next 30 or 40 minutes curled up in bed trying to convince myself I wasn’t going to die in my sleep. How do I shorten the freakout period for such episodes in the future?
I really love Half-Life 1, and today I was playing a recently released mod for it. I kept accidentally stepping on a cockroach while trying to navigate the first level (which produces a yellow blood splat that I have to avoid creating at all costs, since blood decals indicate combat and at that point I had no weapons, so I could not justify the existence of that blood splat at that point in my gaming experience).
Whenever it happened, I had to restart the entire game, since simply loading a previous save could have had the side effect of breaking some of the other decals present in the level (an actual issue with loading saves in Half-Life) which would completely tainted the level and made it totally unenjoyable.
On my fifth or sixth replay (going through the entire intro sequence each time since you can’t skip it), I made the same fucking mistake. And stepped on a goddamn cockroach. I just freaked out, I was hyperventilating for like five minutes straight. I had to curl up in my bed to calm down while fighting back tears because I couldn’t enjoy my favorite fucking game because of this stupid. Goddamn. Cockroach.
I’m not sure if I’ll ever finish the mod, I think it’s just entirely ruined/tainted for me now. I hate OCD so fucking much. I just want to relax and play my favorite game. Is that so much to ask.