How I made a difference

It has been around one year since I started being addicted to Maplestory .(an online massive-multiplayer game in South-east Asia) This past one year also brought changes to my lifestyle adversely and playing Maplestory was a decision I regretted till today. My life would be better if I had not start an addiction that could probably destroy my future.
Initially, Maplestory seemed like a harmless online game for me to pass my time since I was rather free during the June holidays last year. My classmate created an online game account for me and now, how I wished he had never done that. This game is simple to play. Kill monsters to gain experience points, that is all, and it seemed to attract a lot of players of different ages to play. It may seem boring but an added element to the game was the ability to chat with other players from different countries.
My studies were not badly affected as I spent only a few hours a day playing the game, not as much compared with other players playing over ten hours plus and some even spending the whole night playing this game in order to level up and be “stronger”. When I first heard of them, the thought that came into my mind was, “Man! How they are able to spend so much time on an online game and thought that they were crazy about this game. Why would they even be willing to spend their nights playing on this virtual online game which could not even support them in the future? Hence I was shocked and amazed by their actions.”
My character in the game was not very strong or of high status but I soon started to fall into the gaming addiction without me noticing. As what other players would, I too had friends, some who were very closed and some who were probably busy with their lifes. Unfortunately, I was too gullible. As soon as I let some stranger know the password of my account, and before I knew it, everything including mesos (Maplestory currency) was gone.
This started the seed of my gaming addiction as my friend helped me create another account and he said,” He would help me train this account to high level together.” But I foolishly said yes to him. This was also the first account that I started to get ‘serious’ with training the character as if to make up to the lost time when the other character ‘died’.
My gaming addiction soon fell deeper as I spent more time training this character and started spending lesser time on my studies. Even on some occasions, I spent over ten hours on the game in one day itself, but this was not the worst I have done.
As expected with the problems of gaming addiction, did not perform well in my studies although I still managed to pass and get away from failing my subjects. In my mind back then was,” I can do last minute revision so might as well play all I can even though the exams were only a few days away. I didn’t really care much about my studies as I was too engrossed with playing Maplestory.” I still did not realise that I was spending more time on my gaming than on my studies which were more important.
My gaming addiction started to get full swing during the December holidays and also the time when I was ‘backstabbed’ by this classmate of mine who created my game account as he exclaimed,” Maplestory was a childish game and he was more interested in other online games.” I felt as if there was a knife which stabbed me in the back by his sentence.
Nevertheless, I still did not quit my online game and I was starting to get more serious in this free online game as I started using real cash to buy ‘fake’ cash in the game. During the holidays was when I was spending nights staying awake to train my character, I have to admit it was very tiring but I still did it. It was the holidays and since my family was not going overseas so I spent most of my time on this game without touching my textbooks for revision. During this period of time, I started to realise that a lot of other players who were very ‘involved’ in this game as well were spending up to three hundred dollars on the online game and some a thousand plus. They did not see that they spent so much as they were addicted. History repeated itself as my second account was ‘hacked’ due to my foolishness again. Well, this time I had a ‘backup’ account to play with. Even early this year, I still played the online game despite knowing that I had a lot of revision that was needed to be done urgently.
Recently, I had a few great friends from Sarawak and they were doing better than me in my studies and this somehow gave me a wake-up call which started to get me slowly out of this addiction. It was only recently that I found out I have a lot of catching up to do where my studies are concerned and I probably would not complete it as I had faltered a lot.
Anyway, I have to keep moving forward and somehow make up for the times I had lost over this year. Playing Maplestory also let me do things I normally would not do such as making friends with total strangers. However, the price I paid for my gaming addiction was huge. If I were to be given another chance to turn back time, I would not start playing this game because I am starting to regret now. I had a choice back then. This was how I made a difference to my life. Now, I am going to rectify that and make a difference for my life once again. This time, it would be for the better.