I’m not afraid to hate the holidays. Valrhona’s dark chocolate smells good when melted with milk, and my heart glows when the decorations leave sugar-sized glitter in my palm, but there’s nothing else in it for me. The sun sets around 4:30 p.m. in New York and I can no longer tell whether the rot under my windowsill is lamb over rice or chicken. My family is abnormal (let’s leave it at that). But I’m getting bored of my annual misery.
I know what I have to do – I’m going to live like Resident Evil protagonist Ethan Winters for a week.
I would learn how to deal with it from the best. And the games are obviously festive. Resident Evil 7 is it about Thanksgiving because there are plates of gray slime, Resident Evil Village
Day 1: Wash my hands
In Resident Evil, Ethan squirts liquid on his bloodied or sometimes completely severed hand to heal it. This seems like an inherently healthy coping mechanism to me, so I went for it.
I don’t own anything that might be a “healing liquid” – maybe the cloudy liquid that collects at the top of my cup of Greek yogurt, but I’ll save that for later. So I chose accessibility and ran my left hand under the faucet every time I felt uncomfortable.
At my roommate Ben’s suggestion, I started using a water bottle to improve scene accuracy. I poured cold water out of my metal S’well knockoff and my hand started to get really wet. Nevertheless, I became braver and washed my hand at every opportunity. Standing around? Wash. Peel potatoes? Rinse (but this time it was because I had potatoes on hand). Salt beef fillet? Rinse (but this time it was because I had raw cowhide on my hand).
Day 2: Be blonde
I wouldn’t be Ethan Winters if I weren’t blonde.
I mean, technically I’m not blonde; My hair is the same waxy black as the screen on my iPhone 8. But my ex-boyfriend insisted that his hair wasn’t blonde, but “light brown.” And I asked blonde-haired, blue-eyed Ben – he looks like he could teach you pronunciation Hello, I am infertile – what it’s like to be blonde, and he said, “My hair is the color of dust.” So if all these blonde guys don’t think they’re blonde, then I must automatically be blonde.
“I’m blonde,” I announced to my roommate Dan.
“Nice,” he said, barely looking up from his laptop. He was excited.
Day 3: Visualizing deep pain
Since I was blonde, I had taken over Ethan’s head, but I still hadn’t gotten into it. However, it was clear to me that the torment was the key to Ethan – he is in constant pain, his leg is severed, his hand is ripped in half, or his wife is kidnapped.
But I am grateful for all my members, and if I had a wife I would ask her not to be kidnapped. Instead of bringing about one of these terrible things, I thought I could put my meditation skills to the test and imagine myself in incredible pain that was overwhelming the limits of my psyche and body. But then I forgot about it and took a bubble bath. I was still covered in some grease from Thanksgiving.
Day 4: Kidnapping
Visualizations were useless – it was time to get serious. I managed to break down my emotional walls and admitted to myself that I would be living inauthentically without my own kidnapping. So I asked my roommates for the first step early in the day. When I left my bedroom, Ben was gone.
“Bathroom downstairs,” he told me in a cryptic text message. “Come get me.”
The door was locked. I heard Ben answering a personal phone call and I could tell by the fumes that he was drinking La Croix – he had practically disappeared. I was scared and thrilled by the harsh truth of life as Ethan Winters. So by the grace of God I became an Anglo-Saxon. I brushed my teeth and hummed “Silent Night.”
Day 5: Injection
Yesterday’s kidnapping triggered a Germanic generational trauma in me, making me feel more like Ethan than ever. I rode the wave and accepted the difficult decision he faced Resident Evil 7 – inject life-saving serum into the 10% Polish person on the left or the 7% Scots-Irish person on the right?
I approached my roommates with an expired EpiPen.
“I only have one dose,” I told them. Dan went into the bathroom to pee. The standard way I sprayed Ben was by tapping his knee with the safety cap. He didn’t notice the cap and yelled something like, “Don’t contaminate my blood with non-FDA-approved drugs.” Ignoring his panic, I admired the twinkling lights on our mini Christmas tree.
I…admired the twinkling lights? Who… who was I? Who did I become?
Day 6: Keywords
I knew who I was – I was Ethan. That meant I was ready for my most difficult task of the week: tags.
Ethan has all sorts of great catchphrases. For example, when he witnesses unspeakable violence or gets stuck in an unimaginable amount of blood, he says, “What?” or “What the fuck?”
I made a list Quotes by Ethan Winters on my phone and stole a glance at it over breakfast.
“Hey! Hey, don’t talk like that,” I said to Ben. “We’ll find a safe house to put you in until I can find my daughter. I suspect she’s in that old castle.” I threw a look at his scrambled eggs. “Wait a minute, that looks familiar…” [seeing a symbol that looks an awful lot like the Umbrella symbol].”
“I can’t take this anymore,” he replied encouragingly.
Day 7: Pregnant
My roommates were disappointed when my week-long experiment came to an end, but I felt like I had graduated. I wanted to round out the week with something life-changing and meaningful.
Resident Evil 7 And 8th Both revolve around parenthood – in the first case the villain wants Ethan to be her father, and in the second he has become one – so the only logical conclusion for my week was a pregnancy…of the mind. Sorry I’m only half-committed, but my time as Ethan was only one day left and I’m pretty sure nine months is longer.
And finally, being Ethan for so long has left me pregnant with an idea: I may never enjoy the superficial pageantry of the holiday season, but if I approached it with some of Ethan’s goofy determination, it might be easier to get through . I don’t have to change my situation immediately, just my attitude.
Even if that fails, there are some advantages to not being Ethan. Unlike him, I’m not in a video game, doomed to spend eternity being gutted by mold.
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