Hi,

I would like to tell you a story, but my native language is not English so I hope you will excuse me.

It all started several years ago when I was a little kid at 9 years. When I was young, I did various sports, until I injured myself and had to quit. I injured myself so badly that I could no longer do everyday things, such as cycling for example. Even after all the surgeries, I never regained my mobility and could not even bend down to tie my own shoes. I felt useless.

This meant that I spent more and more time indoors all by myself. I became more withdrawn and my self-confidence just dropped. I had a few friends I hung out with, but as soon as they wanted to go outside and play, I could not go and chose to stay inside alone.

After a couple of years, my confidence was at rock bottom. I felt that I could not do anything and my social skills were completely gone. It could go a whole week without me actually talking to a person. It even went so far that I thought the thought "would anyone miss me if I was not here?"

My experience in gaming has largely consisted of singel-player games. But have followed some e-sport and some streamers on twitch over the years, (CS, Rocket League and Valorant). I have never dared to try online games with other players. But after checking out Valorant for a while, I felt like "I wanted to try it".

When I started playing, I only played DM and after that spike rush, there I felt that it was not the whole world if I did not talk. One day, I actually queued for an Unrated and I decided to try to integrate with my teammates. That was great feeling, even though I did not speak any longer sentences, only shorter calls like: "steps outside B", "Smokes here" and so on. To my teammates, I was like any everyday person. I was lyrical, what a feeling!

The more I played, the more progress I made. I even started calling out tactics some rounds. I was surprised at myself. I felt that when I play Valorant I was on the same level as everyone else. I really started living for Valorant so to speak, I played it as much as I could and when I did not play it, I thought about it.

I sat and thought out tactics in my spare time. I bought a small book there I could document what I did well and badly in my matches. When I was going to sleep I just wanted to fall asleep as fast as possible so I could wake up the next day and continue playing, a spark and a feeling I had not felt for a long time.

I feel so confident in communicating and interacting with people now that I even thought about starting to stream. It would have been an incredible milestone for my young self.

I have met so many nice people in this game, and some of them I can now even call my friends. So to all of you that makes this community and Riot, I want to say thanks! You have literally saved my life. I do not see this as a game, I see it as a tool for my own journey. Where I am today is a long way from the person I was, standing in my bathroom with my hand full of sleeping pills.

Even though this with covid-19, I would like to give you all a real good fist bump, like all those cool kids down town. Because that's what my 9 year old I would have felt, cool! <3