I'm only a freshman at my university. Naturally, this means that the memories of high school are still relatively recent in my mind. Some are extremely positive. Indeed, I met some of the most understanding people I have had the pleasure of meeting, many of whom I am still friends with to this day. Other memories are not so positive. I had some pretty vicious things happen in my home life and during the last few months of my senior year, not everything was cheery with graduation on the horizon. But all of that was okay and that's because high school was perhaps the most important time in my development as a human being. After years of being beaten by my sister, I came into high school deeply confused and resentful of the world around me. I had no sense of self, no unique identity to call my own. I had bits and pieces of what you could call a personality, but nothing that really formed a complete whole. Much of my existence had been devoted to simply surviving to the next day and not succumbing to the misery I often came home to after school. Yet once I came out of high school, it was as a completely different person. I gained a sense of humanity; I learned what it was to really feel alive and be a person, realizing that my life wasn't bogged down to my past as long as I didn't allow it to be. I could make the present and future a happy one as long as I faced my inner demons head on and learned how to keep them in check.

It is that last sentence which epitomizes the deep connection I now hold to Persona 4. Not unlike myself, the protagonists of the game undergo harsh trials in which they come to terms with how they feel about life within themselves. And initially they deny those feelings, saying that they aren't a part of themselves, much like how I did as well. Indeed, for a very long time, I had denied to myself that my life had been rife with sadness and I chose to not acknowledge it for a lot of reasons. Not only was it because I was afraid that other people would misunderstand what I had went through and presume that my life had indeed been normal, but also because I had believed that there was no benefit to be had from enduring sadness. After all, when you grow up as a Catholic like I did, you are told to discard a lot of things for what is supposedly your own good. But as I started to question why things were and why the world operated as it did as a teenager, I ultimately faced myself. I faced my fears. I faced my hatred. I faced my sadness. Out of those self-contemplations, I came out as someone who finally had an understanding of myself and why I acted the way I did. While I couldn't say that my inner feelings were instantly tamed or that they completely are to this very, being able to acknowledge them in the first place was a huge step to me finding a way to be happy in this life and not see the world as apocalyptically as some of my relatives would have my believe.

Likewise, Persona 4's cast ends up coming to terms with what they have stored deep within themselves, learning how to work with and not against those inner facets of themselves. The contents for each character are all different. Some have delusions about what it means to befriend someone, while others don't have a clear understanding of their sexual identity, while still others are lost and feel narcissistic about having a reason to live in the first place. They are, essentially, all deeply human emotions which do have a tendency to be bottled up inside. But even when they finally acknowledge the feelings they have within themselves, that in turn is only the beginning of their own personal journies. As their own Social Link events indicate should you choose to undergo them, they still have a ways to go before they begin to really figure things out. As I said in my review of the game, these teenagers are not perfect and it's the chance to watch them all grow up slowly but surely that makes for one of Persona 4's most enthralling and moving spectacles.

It is the fact that they all have very human lives, flaws, and journies to contend with that I have grown to love Persona 4 deeply as a game. I have found it utterly amazing how well I could relate to each characters' inner quandaries, let alone how well I could understand the struggle that it is to truly find yourself. It's something which can only be done on your own since nobody else can tackle the matter of who it is you really are and Persona 4's depiction of that internal struggle really resonated with me. Atlus crafted the most human characters I have ever encountered in a work of fiction. If I didn't know beforehand that they were all imaginary and had simply read about them in passing, I would have thought them to be real people, too, and that is to the great credit of the writing staff and those involved in the character creation process. Again, perhaps nobody else sees the cast that way, but on my end, at least, that's how I've come to perceive them.

And it is now my sincere hope that I can one day craft a tale which is just as impactful for someone else by making the setting and its denizens just as human. For years now, I've drafted various stories that I haven't devoted the time to fleshing out. But now that I've seen that it is indeed possible to infuse characters with as much humanity as people you can meet in real life, I want to author a personal masterpiece of my own where I pour my all into it and then some. I want to make something which is the culmination of the lessons I've learned and the experiences I've had as a human being and turn into something compelling. And perhaps because it's Persona 4 that's made realize how much I really do want to enter the storytelling realm, I want to achieve that within a video game. Once upon a time, I had dreamed of becoming a developer of some sorts, a dream I had gradually abandoned in pursuit of other interests. But in recent times, I've wanted to revive that dream of being a creator in some sort of field and I think Persona 4 has shown me which field I want do it in.

Will I actually be able to go through with the plan? I honestly don't know. But I feel compelled to see if I can achieve the same feeling Persona 4's staff must have found once they made a game of such personal profoundness. If the art of weaving a story can be so rewarding for me as a mere player, I now want to see how capable I am of doing so for someone else.

Such is what it means for me to forever walk in Persona 4's steps.