song 3
late childhood
I got an xbox I think for my eighth birthday and about a month later, just after Christmas my parents broke up. My dad stayed living with us for ages, about a 2 years. Possibly as an act of self-cocooning from the situation I became immersed in games like halo, rainbow six 3, manhunt, ssx tricky, etc.
I also fell in love with horror films around the time. Both the games and the horror films probably brought me closer to my dad than I’d ever been before. In my early years he’d had mental health problems, then did an M.A and all that so this was arguably the first time in my life I was getting attention from him; and video games and horror films were the medium through which I did so.
We’d have “boys nights in” just me and him where I presume my mum was dating her new boyfriend and my sister went to see friends (as she transisioned to being a teenager). That was probably a crucial element in why I’ve always maintained a great relationship with my dad, while my sister didn’t at all.