I was a young boy who was doing so well in school. I came from a poor family who depended on me succeeding so I could get a good job to pull us out of poverty. As a preteen, I repeatedly scored As in all of my classes. This all changed in 1994, on my 12th birthday. My parents bought be a SNES and Final Fantasy VI (back then it was called Final Fantasy III). I was so happy, but my mom made me promise that I would not get addicted.

Boy, did that promise fail badly. At first, I started up staying late trying to beat Kefka. My usual bedtime was 9 because I usually woke up at 6 to get to school by 6:30. However, I ended up staying up later and later. At first it was like 11PM, then it got worse and worse. At one point, I was staying up to around 3AM and my grades plunged. I went from being an A student to a D student and then an F student.

This got even worse when Final Fantasy VII came out. I was 15 at that time and just like Final Fantasy VI 3 years earlier, I became hooked. In fact, it was even worst for me. The story had me so emotionally invested, and at times, I even pulled all nighters playing it. My grades fell so much that I was ousted from my honours, but that wasn't the worst of my problems. I became clinically depressed at the scene where Aerith died, and one year later I dropped out of school consistently playing trying to see if she would ever come back to life which she never did.

I also became useless around the house. As a child, I used to help my mother all the time. After becoming addicted to Final Fantasy, my family essentially fell apart. My dad left my mom after quarreling over how to treat my Final Fantasy addiction. I used to help around the house, but ever since FF6 came out I had been doing nothing but playing video games. My now single mom was working day and night cleaning up and feeding my then morbidly obese self. She loved me so much, but her funds began to tank. We were becoming extremely poor, and we were running out of food. As much as my mom loved me, she needed to support herself too. She had to get me out of the house, but I wasn't even 18 yet, and she didn't want to leave me homeless and on the street. Using the last of her money, she bought me a plane ticket, came to me and said "You're moving with your auntie and uncle in Bel Air". I whistled for a cab and when it came near, the license plate said fresh and it had dice in the mirror. If anything I could say that this cab was rare, but I thought "Nah, forget it" - "Yo, Holmes to Bel Air!" I pulled up to the house about 7 or 8 and I yelled to the cabbie "Yo Holmes, smell ya later". I looked at my kingdom, I was finally there, to sit on my throne as the Prince of Bel Air