I’m broken.

 

That’s not a cry for help—it’s just a matter of fact. I’ve been broken for years. Truth be told, most of us are. Life cracks us in different ways. Some of us just chip a little—like overdrawing a bank account or getting a speeding ticket. Small fissures. Manageable. Forgotten.

 

Others among us collect deeper fractures. The kind born from sexual assaults, violent situations, abusive relationships. Some people manage to walk away relatively intact. Others? Not so lucky. Sometimes the weight of what we’ve endured presses down so hard, we bend in ways we don’t come back from.

 

For almost three years, I’ve lived in a state of constant overstimulation—nerves fried, heart clenched, mind racing. First came the slow death of my marriage, followed by the impossible decision to file for divorce. Then, within nine months, I lost three people—three deaths in rapid succession. Layer in strokes, trauma, and a few other disasters, and you’ve got yourself a full-blown mess of a life. I still live in that hypervigilant space, always waiting for the next bad thing.

 

Everyone copes differently. Me? I play video games. I’m working on an online gunsmithing course. I build things. I daydream about the post-apocalypse. Healthy? Sometimes. Not always. But survival isn’t always pretty, and coping isn’t always Pinterest-worthy.

 

That brings me to Appalachia.

 

I’m thinking of going there—West Virginia, to be exact. No, I’m not trying to live inside a video game (despite rumors to the contrary), but I want to visit the real places where my favorite game, Fallout 76, takes place.

 

For those unfamiliar, Fallout 76 is the latest in the Fallout franchise, and the first to go multiplayer. It’s set in 2103, twenty-five years after nuclear war turned the world into radioactive Swiss cheese. Vault 76, unlike many of the experimental hellholes in other games, was actually designed to protect people and send them out into the world when it was safe to rebuild. That’s where the story begins—emerging from the vault into a shattered, mutated version of West Virginia.

 

And here’s the wild part: the places in the game are real. They exist. The Mothman Museum? Yep. It’s in Point Pleasant, and yes, it looks uncannily similar in-game. Helvetia? A real town famous for its Fasnacht Festival, complete with masks, parades, and now in-game versions full of players fighting off super mutants and giant rad toads. Even The Whitespring Resort is modeled after The Greenbrier, a real-life hotel with a top-secret Congressional bunker hidden underneath.

 

The game world mirrors the real one—just a little more irradiated.

 

So yeah, when I can travel again, I want to go. Just three or four days of wandering, sightseeing, maybe playing Fallout on my PlayStation in West Virginia. Call it nerd tourism. Call it blending fantasy with reality. Call it weird—I don’t care. It sounds like fun. It sounds like healing, even if just a little.

 

And if anyone wants to come along, great. But if not, that’s fine too. This one’s for me.

 

The timing couldn’t be better either. The Fallout TV series recently dropped, and from what I’ve seen, they’re following the same game-to-show path—from the West Coast (Fallout 1, New Vegas) and heading east. This season centers on Las Vegas, and I’m pretty sure it’s setting the stage for future seasons to explore Appalachia. They got a lot right. Though gamers are quick to point out the one glaring inaccuracy: the show never crashes or freezes mid-scene like the actual game. (Gamer humor, but still.)

 

I love this franchise for a lot of reasons. It lets me rewrite the rules. You can play how you want. Be the villain, the hero, the lonely wanderer, or the hopeful settler. It’s a world where choices matter, and sometimes you just want that illusion of control. Especially when real life has stripped so much of it away.

 

People love to scapegoat games like this. They need something to blame. Video games are violent! Autism? Must be vaccines! Don’t like someone’s opinion? Call them “woke.” It’s all too convenient—an easy explanation for people who are either afraid of or too ignorant to search for the truth.

 

But my mom and my dog—they’re not afraid to know the truth about me. Neither am I anymore.

 

So maybe Appalachia won’t heal me. But maybe it’ll remind me that even in a world gone to hell, there’s still adventure, community, and the occasional Mothman sighting.