Candy Crush, Half-Life, and the Days That Test the Soul On survival, escape, and the collapse of the difference between them

Today was rough.

One of those days where everything felt like a mirror I didn't ask to look into.

I got triggered, reacted, over-analyzed, spiraled.

By evening, I found myself back where I always land: on my couch, staring at the soft glow of Candy Crush.

Eight years. Twelve thousand levels.

My longest relationship 😂.

As the candies exploded into their little pixelated fireworks, I suddenly thought: this is what surviving looks like sometimes.

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The Descent

At first, I judged myself.

The shame came quickly. You're wasting time. You could be writing, meditating, working.

Then I stopped and looked deeper.

Everyone escapes somehow.

Some people drink. Some scroll. Some pray. Some stay endlessly busy.

All of it comes from the same instinct: to get a few minutes away from the weight of being human.

I realized I wasn't escaping life.

I was escaping half-life—that dull, gray state where you function but don't feel.

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The Shadow Beneath the Escape

When I stopped judging the game and started listening to the feeling beneath it, I found the same ache I've always known:

You crave something real, but the world keeps offering performance.

You crave community, but the world gives competition.

You crave presence, but the world sells distraction.

And when you live inside that contradiction long enough, you start grasping at any door that promises relief.

For me, tonight, that door had candies and colors.

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The Rabbit Hole

I used to think spirituality meant transcending the mess.

Now I think it means something more complicated.

Because here's what I noticed: the moment I stopped judging myself for Candy Crush, I started a different kind of escape. I philosophized it. I astrologically contextualized it. I turned my numbness into a teaching moment. I made it mean something.

And wasn't that just another layer of the same avoidance?

This is the trap that nobody talks about in spiritual circles.

We shame ourselves for drinking, for scrolling, for gaming—and then we don't shame ourselves for meditating, for journaling, for processing our trauma. But if the mechanism is the same—if we're still using something to not feel the weight of the contradiction—then what's actually different?

Alcohol numbs you. Candy Crush numbs you. Shadow work, astrology, spiritual practice—they can numb you too. They just wrap it in meaning, which makes it feel noble.

I'm not saying spirituality is false. I'm saying I can't tell anymore if I'm practicing it or performing it. And the terrifying part is: maybe there's no difference. Maybe everyone—the alcoholic, the workaholic, the spiritual seeker, the Instagram activist—is just doing the same thing in different costumes. Choosing an escape because the matrix doesn't actually allow for what we crave.

You crave something real, but the world keeps offering performance.

So you perform your realness. You escape into games, then escape from that shame by turning it into wisdom. Round and round.

Maybe that's not failure. Maybe that's just what living inside an inauthentic system looks like.

The Unresolved Part

And I don't have a resolution for this. I'm not sure there is one.

I'm still on level 12,322. Still writing about the escape instead of escaping the system. Still using my Pisces Sun as an excuse for numbness and my Scorpio stellium as permission to dive into rabbit holes.

But here's what's shifted: I stopped sorting the world into good escapes and bad escapes.

Alcohol isn't bad. Candy Crush isn't bad. Meditation isn't good. Shadow work isn't good. They're just ways humans meet the unbearable parts of being alive inside a system designed to keep us half-asleep.

The only thing that matters is awareness.

Can you notice what you're doing? Can you see the loop without hating yourself for being in it? Can you reframe it—not into meaning, but into movement?

Because once you're aware, you can't unknow it. And that awareness itself changes the texture of the escape. It's no longer unconscious numbness. It becomes a choice. A ritual. A tiny rebellion that you're doing with your eyes open.

So yes, I'm still playing. Still writing. Still spiraling. Still here.

But I'm awake while I do it.

And maybe that's the only integrity available to us inside a system that wasn't built for our becoming.