This article contains spoilers for Persona 3. is a story of death in the traditional end-of-life sense, but it’s also about death in a more metaphysical way, too – the death of one “self” to give way to a new one. While I’ve never shot myself in t🅰he head to summon a mythological demon, I have “killed off” one of my “selves,” so to speak, to allow a new one to bloom.
Just before Covid hit, I was seriously struggling with my mental health. I was 26, standing at the bottom of the mountain of all the things I’d brushed aside and buried deep down 🥃for years to deal with “when I had time,” and its shadow was blocking out the sun. But I kept busy to avoid that. I worked a lot, I went 𒈔out often, I traveled the world, I did all the things that are supposed to make you happy and couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t.
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But when the pandemic rendered me alone in my bedroom for months, I suddenly had nothing but time to disassemble, to fall apart completely in the ways I𒁃 needed, to confront the ugly parts of myself in ways I never had. It was a long and difficult proꦿcess, but standing on the other side of it now, I can promise that I wouldn’t be writing this if I hadn’t undergone that process - the way I had been living before was fast, loose, and unsustainable.
Not everyone sees that, though, and watching you change and grow can sometimes make people upset. For me, that was someone I’d called my best friend for over a decade. We met as teenagers, like the majority of SEES in Persona 3, and as I played th🏅rough their stories and watched them confront themselves and grow, however scary that was, I kept seeing uncomfortable parallels to my own relationships.
But I also w😼atched as these fictional high schoolers enriched their relationships in ways I had been trying and failing to do, confronting themselves, one anothꦺer, and the past all at once, and the story resonated with me. In looking back over my adventure with this former friend, I saw that we’d gone through things together the same way SEES had – not fighting any actual demons together, sure, but taking on our own.
Akihiko and Shinjiro’s storyline specifically struck a chord with me, since, despite adoring Akihiko, I don’t agree with how he handled Shinjiro’s situation. For months, Akihiko tries to insert himself into Shinjiro’s process, thinking himself a friend who wanted what he thought was best, but regardless of how redeeming the moment might seem for Shinjiro as a character, Akihiko’s idea of what’s best for Shinj𝓀iro ends up dragging hi🍸m back into something he was trying to escape, and ultimately getting him killed.
After putting myself through the discomfort of growth, having someon⛎e try to force me back into a box I’d outgrown felt suffocating. I told her, like Shinjiro told🌳 Akihiko, that my decisions and feelings were my own, that I appreciated her nudging me in what she thought in her heart was the right direction, but that I had to figure things out on my own. It felt like she was trying to tether me to the things from which I needed to escape.
There was no accidental death involved in the changing💟 of who my friend and I are as people, though, no mystery or madness to solve. We didn’t get any supernatural powers, or spend months climbing the inverted pit of hell that erupted from a local high school. We were just two adult women, passionately growing🐠 in our own directions, neither of us willing to admit for way too long that we weren’t still the same people at 30 that we were at 18.
But, like Shinjiro, I felt some obligation. We were “best friends,” after all, even if it hadn't really felt like that in years, so I grit my teeth and tried to meet her in the middle. But by the time I reached the roof on the final day of Persona 3, I realized as I laid my head down in Aigis’ lap that I would have chosen far too many people ahead of this friend if I had to choose with whom to spend the final moments of my life.
For the first time in years, though, when I played Persona 3, I wasn’t hoping to die. I felt more alive than ever, but Persona 3 is a lesson that not everyone who begins a journey with us survives the whole thing. Once the rose-tinted glasses come off on someone or something, it’s difficult to put them back on - then, you’re choosing to lo🐲ok away from it, and just like SEES, I couldn’ꩲt anymore.
Becaus꧟e Persona 3 reminded me that growth may not be linear or pretty, sure, but if nothing else, it’s p𓆏ossible.
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