This Story, is why I choose to spend my Christmas with you, Fellow LoL Players

To understand this story, you need only know one thing about myself. I've a tendency to commit 150% to anything I choose to do in life. Knowing this;

Although I can give you no date for the time I began league of legends, I can tell you Xerath was the champion that had just come out. I'd been an avid Ultima Online gamer for the better part of 11 years, since I was a child, and it was time for a change. The first game of LoL I ever played was magic, it brought together all my favorite aspects of all my favorite games.

I daresay one match is was the catalyst to changing my life forever, but in retrospect it may not be the match I expected. It started with a player named Rince. (I can say that name on the boards because it's no longer his name, he's done at least 4 summoner name changes since that time) He was gangplank, myself kennen, and our teams were nowhere near our skill level. The match was more him vs myself, and 4 meatshields on either side. Both of us ended the game at around 30 kills - 3 deaths - 20 something assists. We added eachother and wouldn't speak for a long time.

Until one day, out of the blue, he says I've been watching you jungle, and you look like exactly what our team could use. Would you like to come try out? I was a dreamer, and this seemed so much more than it actually was at the time, but I was brought into their mumble channel, and met many of people I still call friends to this day. The person who'd run the team, was called Fox. I still call him fox, and currently, he's my neighbor. That's how this story begins.

I'm originally from Michigan, and at the time I was the manager of a motocross track, going on 3 years at that point. I'd spend the evenings with my girlfriend, and just being a closet nerd on LoL. I was making plenty enough to get by at the track, but never quite enough to get ahead. I'd seen tournaments and professional play, the huge prizes for the best teams, and knowing I'd been the best gamer I knew for years, that seemed just the ticket for me. Fox and I, after around 3 months of talking in mumble, and raidcall, made a plan with our team. We really were dreamers.

Fox lives in Alaska. He'd told me about the unreal amount of money to be made there. The team decided we should all move to Alaska, and form a gaming house. We could work in the summer, make all the money we needed to live through winter, then proceed to spend 7 months out of the year gaming, and we'd truly believed that after a year, we could be on the professional level. I'd be the one to make the first move.....

I was also the only one that ever ended up making that move. I stayed in the top of a garage the first two month's I'd lived here, this cozy little room that wasn't much more than a place to stay, but it gave me time to get my bearings and save some money up for an apartment. I'd ended up getting a great place on the upper side of town, moved my girlfriend and Fox in, and the house commenced. The other three players, although they really wanted to, just weren't quite as much dreamers as myself and fox. I ended up with several good jobs about town, but my problem is I'm greedy; in the best way possible. I literally do as much overtime as any job will allow me.

Trying to balance 80-100 work weeks, while maintaining a relationship, while trying to become a professional LoL player, well, can stretch any person thin. During this time my girlfriend and myself began experimenting with various illicit substances, to the point eventually where we broke up when I wanted to stop. (I'd stopped playing league almost completely at that point) She didn't think I should control her decisions, and we'd end up parting ways over that disagreement. This was a year into living in this small Alaskan town.

But I had money coming out of my ears, time to play league of legends, and I'd managed to kick an addiction once. The only problem, I couldn't focus my mind on league of legends anymore. I was depressed, because that had been a four year relationship. Fox had moved out, and moved in with his girlfriend, although we still played league every chance we got. I decided solitude wasn't for me, and ended up meeting another gamer within town that would shortly become my roommate. He was a bartender, and decided after a month of living with me, I absolutely would have to be a bartender too, because it matched my charismatic personality to the tee. This was the end of year two living in Alaska. I hadn't touched league hardly at all that year.

That may, he'd ended up switching bars he worked at, and with sway at the new bar, and my own work ethic, we managed to sneak me in as a new bartender. My god, I'd never made so much money in my life. What I would have made in a week at the track, I'd pull in after 4-5 hours at the bar. 300-400 dollar nights, with my best night to date being a $1500 night. So much money, mixed with depression and free time on my hands that I just couldn't focus on league, I fell into the night life.

Now, for those that have never experienced this, the night life was awesome, at first. I'd done enough cocaine to high five scarface, smoked enough weed to make snoop dogg high, dropped acid until I'd seen Jesus, ingested enough mushrooms to talk to my roommates chesire cat tattoo, and done enough Adderall that I could literally be up for two-three days at a time and wouldn't bat an eye that this may not be the healthiest lifestyle. And the girls, my god all the girls that came with doing this. It wasn't even fair. So.....It's not exactly easy to get out of that lifestyle once you are a part of it either.

I started getting clean in September. Of course, as karma would have it, in Mid October I'd ended up injuring myself at the bar, after a draft glass shattered. I'd completely severed the tendon in my hand, on my pinky finger. I was depressed once again, because work was my life at that point, and now I was unable to work. One $20,000 surgery later, I was as good as new. Mostly, it's still a bit awkward typing with that digit. After my surgery, with the lack of work, I'd logged onto league once more, and decided it was time to commit again, for real.

I've been clean since September, and that has everything to do with league. The game that it could be said was the catalyst to this wild adventure, was the same game that got me out. I'm headed back to Michigan in 2 weeks. I've not seen any of my family in three years.... and let me tell you, I've never been happier.

I choose to spend my Christmas day playing league with a community that has been my family all along the way here. I'm not sorry about any of this, because this is all part of life. I just achieved platinum elo, and everything is looking up from here. So if ya want someone to quene up with, I'm still a jungle main ^^, and i'll be happy to have ya.

-Deuces, ITA PvProdigy