Finding the Dynamo

I've played the Mass Effect trilogy three times now.  Each time, everything was more poignant and meaningful.  I got something new out of each run.  And each time that I returned to an emotional experience, it grew even more powerful.

This culminated so much that, in my final moment, after I made my last decision, I broke down.  I was consumed with tears.

It wasn't sad.  I did the right thing, and I accepted the sacrifice that I made to obtain the outcome that I thought was best.  I changed the galaxy in a huge way, but I don't believe that the gravity of my last action was nearly what got me so worked up.  It was something underneath the surface, something that I couldn't pinpoint that was assaulting me emotionally.


The experience was deeply fulfilling.  Maybe, in a way, it was too fulfilling?  Such a rewarding adventure that its end was too much for me to handle?

I say without chagrin that I grew to love the characters.  I loved the cast.  And I think I've always been eaten away by the recognition that they're merely characters.  They were all important, and they were agents.  They fought for the changes they wanted, they fought for what they believed in.  Most importantly, they fought together.  The contrast between fictions like Mass Effect and the kind of world that I live in is stark in this respect; for now, I'm merely a civilian among civilians.  I don't feel like I or the people around me are, in that manner, fighting together or really fighting for anything at all.

I attribute some of this to alienation with the rigidity of my environment.  I feel like I'm missing some vital liberties, and I feel like it's hard to find the other agents.  The others who decide that they are responsible for rewriting fate, and for redirecting the flow of society's progress towards something healthier, truer, freer, and more enlightened.

With all that said, I still don't know what makes me cry.  I don't know what gets me choked up at moments that do not even resemble despair.  I might be on the wrong track entirely, but at least I've got something onto a page that I can look at later.  I have some marking of what is on my mind, along with some marking of what's in my soul.  I guess I'll shelve the issue for a checkup at some later date.