Dear Sims,

Where do I begin? For as long as I can remember, you have been a part of my life.

Do you think it’s silly that I would like to express my love for The Sims, yes, the computer game, in a letter? My brother certainly thought my love was silly too. At least, he thought that my passion for you was “idiotic” enough to be captured in a picture and labelled as “husband and wife”. Before I really started paying attention in school, The Sims was my teacher. Basic as it was then, the simulation game taught me what I needed to know to fit in and understand life.

Sims, you taught me about relationships. When my Sim neglected their friends, it was you who taught me that relationships are “…like plants. If you don’t water them, they wither and die”. You taught me that it was easy to make friends. Because of you, I’m less afraid to come up to someone to say hi, to start a friendly interaction. Because of you, Sims, I know how to take care and monitor my relationships because I understand that they require consistent care. Perhaps I may have taken my learning a bit too far on this one though, for I remember my answer to a question I took in my primary school English test on comprehension, “What is the relationship between John and Jason?”. I scratched my head during the test, thinking about how Sims showed me relationship bars from 0 to 100 based on how strong they were. I could not see any numerical values within the comprehension passage. I shrugged and wrote 100%. (The answer they were looking for? Father.)

Sims, you gave me my love for stories. When Sims 2 was released in 2004, I was nine years old. I had just started devouring storybooks then. I remember the pure ecstasy and wonder I felt when I learnt that in Sims 2, my Sims would live, really live. Babies were born, they would grow to children, to teenagers, to adults, and finally pass on. They had memories! The simulation of life became so much more raw, and the pre-made families all came with stories that you could read in a little blurb that introduced the neighborhood and family. Before I started reading Nancy Drew, the real mystery that consumed my life was the question, “Where did Bella Goth disappear to?”. As I played Sims 2, my love for stories grew. I created stories not just in my head, but I could write the stories down as I captured screenshots of the game. My first fiction stories would always be with the Sim families that I had.

As I grew older and delved into the world of non-fiction, self-help books, I found myself easily agreeing with Carol Dweck’s “Mindset”. Innately, somehow I understood I had been living by the growth mindset throughout my life. Sims, it was you again. You gave me the right mindset for life. As I played and watched my Sims do their homework, practice the guitar, read a skill book, and jog on the treadmill, I had also digested the consistent results that hard work always delivered. It became a truth universally acknowledged, to me and my Sim world, that you get out what you put in. Because of you, I’m not afraid to try, to practice, and to put in the hard work. You gave me a growth mindset long before Carol Dweck put her pen down to paper.

Sims, we have a beautiful relationship. You give me so many things, and I give you so many hours of my life. Hearing your theme song, especially those from the 2000s era, gives me a sense of nostalgia and quiet happiness. As with many love letters, I could go on forever about all the things you have given me. You give me an escape when I need a break from reality, even now as an adult. You gave me a head start in vocabulary. Heck, you gave me my first sex education lesson.

Perhaps most significantly, you have given me something I doubt anyone, or anything else, can ever give me. “You can be anything, but you can’t be everything,” was a quote that scarred me as I came of age. I want to experience the world, I want to be a teacher, but I also want to live my life at sea. No! I want to be a wanderer, travelling the world and living out of a van. The pain of this life is that we can only choose one. Nothing can be as good as experiencing it in real life, but Sims, you sure give me a great alternative. Challenge everything.

Love, me.
(72% style)

I’m now 30, and to imagine that when you were my age, you already had my brother and me. Being still unmarried and unsure what I really want out of my life, I cannot believe that you were working full time yet still somehow managed to come home to us every day to have dinner together, to read us to sleep, and to have the energy to bring us out on the weekends. It is oddly heartbreaking for me to think of how our relationship has changed over three decades.

For the first decade, I had clung on very tightly to you, to dad, and to my siblings. I don’t know when people start fearing death, but I am very sure that death was one of my first and greatest fears. Before I turned ten, I remember sitting with you by the window being very afraid. I asked you if you would wait for me at the gates of Heaven so that you could be the first thing I saw when I died. I made you promise, over and over again, to stay there and wait for me so that we would not be lost from each other.

The second decade, as with most parent-child relationships, things changed. I was growing into my own, so they say. From a loving, close, relationship, ours turned into a cold one fraught with secrets and anger. Emotions had subsided by the time I went into university overseas and you took two weeks off work to help me settle in. However, I will regret not being matured enough to have recognized your action as love. I am ashamed that I did not reciprocate, and instead I left you alone in my dormitory while I went out and stayed out late into the night under the guise of making new friends. You let me sleep on the bed, you took the sleeping bag on the floor. To think that I had only deigned to have dinner with you once during the two weeks, while you were alone in my room with nothing else to do. I try to wipe the memory of the second decade out of my mind.

The third decade, thankfully, I matured midway through and started trying to get the relationship back to where it should have been. Alas, time and maturity are trickster twins – the moment you get one, the other starts slipping away. One night, we were driving late at night to grab Macdonald’s for my brothers, when all of sudden for no apparent reason you turned to me and said so very nonchalantly, “I wonder what your brothers would look like when they grow old”. I don’t know what that comment meant to you then, but I think of what you said every now and then and it saddens me to think that the futures that my brothers and I walk towards everyday will always remain a mystery to you after some point.

Today, I wish that I can spend more time with you, yet I also feel my own dreams and ambition tugging me in other directions. As I get to the age you were when I pestered you to wait for me at the Heavenly gates, the fear that the time I have left with you is running out looms larger. Up till my last decade, I only had to fear some ungodly catastrophe, a freak accident, some rare, black swan event that would cause you would be taken away from this earth. Today, the fear of losing you is no longer irrational; the fear is real and it gnaws on me, it is a logical conclusion to the ailment of life. It grows every time I see you and notice that you have gotten skinnier, that you look frailer. Every time I hear you complain about some new thing that is bothering you, whether it be a worsening memory or unexplained pains, I am reminded that unlike other fears, this is one fear that will come to pass.

I cannot change the past and treat you as you deserved then, and I cannot control the future and get to have you in my life forever. The only thing I can do is to believe that I am making the right choices in balancing time with you now and time to work on my future. When the day comes as I know it shall, then I can only be strong and believe that you will wait for me as you had promise those many years ago. Loss is a pain that everyone on earth will go through, and we are no different. Neither of us are perfect, but I will not let that nor any fear stop me from loving you better.

63% style score