PlayStation Zero
After my son went back into rehab for the second time, I somehow came into possession of most of his stuff.
I had all his clothes, except for the trash bag full of things that he somehow managed to convince the airline was his carry-on. I had his extensive collection of shoes, and I had his PlayStation 3.
He had a collection of about 20 games for it. The last one I remember playing with him was Grand Theft Auto V. I remember it being incredibly realistic. They did a great job showing off some high points of the city of Los Angeles.
He became frustrated with me playing the game because I just liked to drive around and look at the landmarks. First, was the long, skinny road that takes you down to PCH in Santa Monica. There’s a lot of stuff around Hollywood, and I pointed out to him that when your character dies, you re-spawn at Cedar’s
He reminded me that the name of the game was “Grand Theft Auto”, not “Drive Around and Look at Shit”.
I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the playstation. I’m not much of gamer, but I was in a new condo, and I guess I could use a BluRay player, so I hooked it up.
It came to life, and immediately wanted to update.
I grabbed a game to test it out.
I opened the case and it was empty. No problem, I have a whole box full of them. I grabbed the next case. It was empty too, as was the third.
I looked through 23 cases and came up empty 23 times. All the cases were there, but there were zero games.
I cried when I realized what must have happened. He had sold the games when he ran out of money and wanted more drugs.
All the birthdays and the Christmas presents meant nothing to him. He wanted the drugs. He had sold all the games because, as long as the empty boxes were there, we wouldn’t question anything.
The drugs were more important to him than his family. They were more important than all the memories. He once said that he didn’t even remember most of his childhood; the drugs erased it all. The drugs took my little boy away and left an addict in his place. They left an addict who didn’t remember pleading with me for a video game when his mother thought it was too mature for him. He didn’t remember the time we spent playing together. He didn’t remember most family vacations or anything we’d done in recent years. He remembered his drugs; that’s it.
It hurt so much that he had sold his presents to get high. It made me sick to my stomach to think that the money I earned to buy him a present he wanted so badly, was squandered on something that took such a heavy toll.
A few weeks later, I was unboxing more of his clothes that his Aunt sent back to me. In the box, I found a travel case for music CD’s.
I look to see what was in it and I cried again. This time, it was happy tears. Inside the case were all the missing games. He had packed them in the CD case so he could take them with him when he had moved to Tennessee. He still cared about something. Maybe my little boy is still in there somewhere.