Over the past several months, I had been debating with myself what the real purpose of this website is. And to be honest, I’m still trying to figure that out. Don’t get me wrong; there will still be guides here on this site. But as time has gone by, I’ve realized that I don’t want to be another one of those Steam Deck-/Linux gaming-oriented sites that just reports on the same thing that 100 other websites are doing. Frankly, there’s too much saturation in that area, in my opinion.

So, as you could probably tell for my undying love of the Smash series, I’m thinking I’m going to have more posts in that direction. But it won’t just be that; there will also be guides as I had mentioned, and there are going to be a couple of personal posts that reflect my frustration on life. So you could say The Outcaster’s Notebook is going to be a mixed bag as far as what you’re going to read next. One post might be related to the Steam Deck; another may talk about something going on in the Smash community. And then you’re going to have a post like this, where I’m going to relate a personal experience.

The problem is, depression has gotten in the way. Depression really sucks. Frankly, I haven’t really been motivated to write anything as of the past few months. That being said, however, though what you’re about to read next is very personal, I need a healthy way to express my anger and frustration towards the American healthcare system. This is an issue that really has been bothering me for a while, and I think it will also help some people understand where I’m coming from when they labeled me as being “hostile” when they tried to reach out to me when LGC abruptly shut down.

Warning: the following is a dark and personal subject matter.

A Walkthrough

I’ve been in a psych ward. Twice, actually. The first time was nearly a decade ago. I had just gotten home from my third shift and was making some breakfast on a cool February morning when I heard a knock on my door. Two police officers, clad with tasers attached to their belt, were there. They told me they received a distressed phone call from one of my family members. They were concerned that I might harm myself.

Now, I’m going to stop there for a second and try to give you a minute to contemplate that situation. Imagine you were in my shoes. Imagine how freaking scared you might be seeing these full-armored cops with tasers, ready to taze you at any moment’s notice should you try to resist them.

They ended up searching my body, making sure I didn’t have any sharp objects on me. I was then carried by ambulance to a hospital for what was deemed as “further evaluation”. A few questions later with a so-called “therapist” that actually didn’t seem interested in my well-being, she decided to transfer me to a psych ward.

They Make You Feel Even Worse

Now let me walk you through the process of being at a psych ward, at least an American one. You’re surrounded by some 20-odd other “patients” who are just as depressed as you are. They might be around the same age as you; they might be two or three times your age. Imagine how uncomfortable and awkward it is when you’re at the dinner table, with a dozen other people, and yet no one is talking. There’s no sort of conversation going on, because everyone is too depressed to even talk. You just end up eating your meal as quickly as possible to get yourself out of there.

You’re in an environment that you’re not familiar with. You share a room with one of the patients. That patient might snore like a chainsaw when it’s time to go to bed. You wake up with a bad back in the morning because of how terrible the mattress is. You have to ask one of the staff members every time you want to take a shower. You can’t just waltz into the kitchen to make yourself something to eat; you have to tell the staff what you want, because they don’t want you near any knifes, for fear of your safety. You can’t even trim your own freaking fingernails, cut your hair, your facial hair, any of that crap. If you brought shoes with laces, the laces get removed. If you brought sweatpants that have a string, the string gets removed.

You put on a new set of scrubs each day, because you didn’t get a chance to plan your stay there, so you only came with the set of clothes on your back. You’re bored out of your mind; you feel like you’re in a prison, constantly being monitored by the staff to make sure you don’t harm yourself. Sure, there might be some occasional activities, but otherwise, you’ve got nothing to do.

You want friends or family to visit? They can…if you can actually contact them. If you brought your phone, you can’t have that, because apparently the staff don’t want you to get PTSD from social media or some crazy bat crap like that. You got the telephone booth at the psych ward, but what if you don’t even remember your friends’ phone numbers? What if you do remember and you call them, and they don’t answer because they don’t recognize the caller ID? How the frick are you even going to get someone you’re familiar with to comfort you during your stay at that freaking hellhole?

The Interrogation

As if all of that wasn’t inconvenient and uncomfortable enough, this is the part that pisses me off the most. I remember being sat down in the doctor’s office, surrounded by three complete strangers. One of them is the doctor, the other a therapist, the third just a freaking college graduate trying to get her foot in the door. They all have laptops in front of them, getting their fingers warm for the dozens of words that they type per second for everything that you say to them.

“Can you tell us what happened?” the Hispanic chick graduate student asked me.

I looked at the three of them. Then I looked outside the window. A Beamer was parked in the parking lot. I had a hunch that car belonged to the doctor.

I looked at the three of them uncomfortably. Here were these complete strangers, and yet they just expected me to open up my darkest thoughts to them?

I hesitated, slowly opening up to them, too uncomfortable to even make eye contact with them as I spoke. As I’m talking, they’re furiously typing notes on their laptops. It made talking even more uncomfortable. It made me feel like I was being interrogated. On top of this, their typing sounds are so loud that I can’t even hear myself think.

After I finished my story, the doctor told me that I was keeping my information “closely guarded to” my chest. I was infuriated. How the hell could a freaking portly-ass “doctor” expect me to be this complete open machine to her? And even after me opening up to her, she just told me something along the lines of, “Okay, we’re going to adjust your medication” and that was pretty much the end of it. Here I was, opening up my darkest thoughts to this complete stranger, and she wasn’t even going to offer me any sort of comfort? Not even a smile? To make things worse, the therapist sitting adjacent of her reminded me to make sure I got my health insurance straightened out. What the hell, dude? I’m so depressed out of my mind and you just expect me to do that myself? Even while here in the psych ward, where I don’t even have access to a computer, you expect me to do just that. Take care of my insurance. What the hell are you even getting paid for, anyway?

Obviously, that’s not what I said to him. But to this day I have to fight off the urge to…okay I’m not going to go there.

But Wait, There’s More

I’m still not done with the cons of being at a psych ward. Did I mention that you’re there for at least a week? And because of that you miss an entire week’s worth of work? How the frick are you supposed to get your bills paid on time?

Oh, and let’s not forget how pissed off your friends and family members are when you finally get home. They’re worried out of their freaking mind, wondering where the hell you were during that week that you’re gone. They might have even filed a missing person report at the police station. Oh, but guess what? You couldn’t even contact any of them, because your damn phone is taken away from you.

I mean, I really could go on and on about how even more miserable and depressing a psych ward makes you feel, but I think I’ve made my point, and honestly, writing about this right now is making my blood boil.

Understanding Where I’m Coming From

So, now we move forward to the time when LGC shut down for the first time. Ironically, this was right around the time Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom released. I had abruptly shut down everything – the website, my social media accounts, my Discord channel, all that. I guess it was natural for people to wonder what happened to me. A deep depression had settled in me, and I just didn’t feel motivated to continue operating the site. It was my mistake to not inform anyone in the first place of what my plans were.

Don’t get me wrong: I genuinely did appreciate those of you who reached out to me during that time and asked if I was alright. And I apologize for not immediately getting back to any of you. My problem, however, is when the concern got a little too far, too quickly. My website was only down for two days and people were already quickly in the talks of wanting to “send someone” over. This is why I got so scared (or, as some of you put it, “hostile”) – because I really, really did not want to have to go through the experience of going to that boring-ass, depressing psych ward again.

“Hey, I get it man,” someone in a group chat on Discord once told me, when I told them how scared I was. “But I just don’t want anything to happen to you.”

No, clearly they don’t “get it”. You have no idea what I had to go through there, and how much worse I felt at the end of it.

Sigh. I don’t even know what I’m getting at anymore. I guess I’m trying to make my point here, in trying to help people understand where I was coming from when LGC shut down, and how scared and “hostile” I was at how over-reactive some people were when it happened. I apologize for being a bit brash at the time.

So yeah, there you have it. I don’t want anyone’s pity over this.

I don’t mean to make this post sound like a discouragement. Physically, I’m in great health. Mentally, I deal with depression every now and then, but otherwise, I’m fine. And again, I want to thank everyone who have reached out to me over the years, offering me words of comfort and support. Those words, to this day, help me a lot to just get through another day.