This week, I found myself thinking about a piece of advice I received from my mom: “Give what you don’t have.”
She means it in the way of giving someone something that you want deeply for yourself, to find fulfillment in the act of giving even if you can’t receive what you want. I had an opportunity to do this when - during a Pokemon Go event - I met the four-year-old child of a friend’s friend.
Jake (name changed for privacy) was eager to learn how to play the game. So eager that he ran into poles and didn’t notice when it was time to cross the street, in fact - and he was so full of questions for anyone who would give him the time of day. Most people wanted to keep the Pokemon Go event going faster than what he could do, but I found myself hanging back, enthused about his discovery of something to get so excited about.
It reminded me a lot of myself as a kid - trying to engage the adults around me in whatever my newest obsession was, and Pokemon was absolutely one of them. The trading card game came out when I was six years old and I quickly got my entire family involved.
Dad played with me as much as I wanted, competitively. Nana didn’t quite understand the game, so she told me to look at her hand of cards and play whichever one was best for me (much to my surprise, I almost always won). Mom humored me with occasional games and somehow became the Cohen family champion in a bracket tournament I set up.
I used many of my cards in decks, but I also had a big binder with all of my extra cards arranged in numerical order of the set. It was Base Set, the first one to ever come out, and it included all of my favorite pokemon from the original 151. I had a diglett card that I used to take into my dad’s office and slap him with it while yelling “Mud Slap,” one of the moves on the card, before I would run away giggling. And when he went to Japan for a business trip, he brought me back a pack from the Team Rocket expansion, and gave it to me when I lost a tooth. I pulled the rarest and most expensive card from the set: a Dark Charizard, plotting evilly on the front of the card I couldn’t read but loved to bits anyway.
I loved my cards so much, even when my initial obsession with Pokemon faded a little. It’s something that has stuck with me all my life, but back then, I didn’t know that. All I knew was that a girl in my grade, Caitlyn (name changed for privacy), came up to me one day on the playground and asked me if she could have my Pokemon cards for her little brother who was learning to play.
I wanted her to stop bullying me. I wanted her to tell the other girls to do the same. I thought it would be a good trade - something I loved for something I needed. I thought I was being mature and doing what I needed to do, making sacrifices like a proper adult. And so, I snuck the binder to school the next day and gave it to her.
When my parents found out, they weren’t mad - just incredibly sad. My dad was so hurt that I hadn’t kept the Dark Charizard. Truth was, I meant to take it out of the binder, but forgot. I instantly felt so guilty that I couldn’t wait for school the next day so I could undo my mistake.
But as soon as I went to Caitlyn and asked for the cards back, she said she’d lost them.
It didn’t stop me from begging her with increasing desperation for the next few weeks. It didn’t stop her from telling me to kill myself in middle school - the same bullying I feared and hated. And the exchange never left my mind, to the point that even years later, I reached out to her on Facebook to see if she had any idea of where the cards could be and offered to pay for their safe return. She’d told me she had thought of me when her parents cleared out their house, but found nothing.
I don’t think I’ll ever know for sure what happened to those cards. When I had my mental health breakdown in my junior year of college, I equated having Pokemon cards with feeling good, and spent money recklessly to get a collection again. I’ve sold most of the cards I impulsively bought back then, thanks to the bad memories, but I’ve kept some and over the years I’ve gotten more.
The only problem is, these cards are all different and new - and when I’m having a bad time mental-health-wise, I need things to stay the same. It’s why I watch Lord of the Rings on repeat or listen to the same song on my Pandora station over and over. But the Base Set cards I once owned and loved are now worth way more than I can justify spending.
The practical side of me misses the fact that any cards I wasn’t particularly emotionally attached to would be worth hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars - and I’d be able to keep the ones I loved. It would be my choice, as an adult, and I wouldn’t feel like I was being backed into a corner. The sentimental side of me misses the cards I used to play with on the living room floor, spreading them out and putting them in decks and playing with my family. I still have the memories, but they feel tainted with shame.
I am ashamed that my younger self felt so desperate that I thought the only way to avoid bullying was to give away the cards for nothing. As an adult, I sometimes wondered why no one stepped in and forced Caitlyn’s parents to give me back the cards right away, even if it made the bullying worse. But the school would never have helped and my parents wouldn’t have wanted me to get bullied more, and now, decades later, it’s far too late.
I did, at one point, buy a Japanese Dark Charizard card on eBay. I tell my friends about how Dad brought it back for me from Japan and how thrilled I was, and I keep it in a place of honor on my desk along with the very, very few cards I treasure as much as my old ones.
But sometimes, when I’m particularly down on myself, I’ll look at the Dark Charizard on my desk and see something different.
I bought you to fill a hole you can’t fill.
You’re not my Charizard.
My Charizard that Dad brought me from Japan is gone forever.
When I listen to people talking about dreams that will never come to fruition, I feel silly for thinking about my old Pokemon card binder that I might not even recognize if I were to miraculously find it. I don’t remember what the cover looked like or what any of the pages looked like beyond the first. I don’t remember if the cards were Shadowless, which would mean they were worth thousands more.
What I do remember is the immense shame of having given in to peer pressure, having felt like this was something I had to do to protect myself because no one else was looking out for me in this way. My parents did their best when I was at home, but in school, I had to deal with everything alone.
All these thoughts ran through my head when my friend asked me if Jake could have a few of my cards. I wanted him to feel like he was getting something special - an adult who was feeding into an interest instead of making it a bother like so many other people did even on that one day I met him. I picked out a Pikachu in a hat because it’s his favorite, and a Diglett because it was mine. I picked out shiny cards that would appeal to a child and cards that made me smile with nostalgia.
I’m not going to get my collection back. But a little kid is going to have the option to run into his parents’ or little brother’s room and whack them with a Diglett card while yelling “Mud Slap” - and maybe my Dark Charizard is out there too, enjoying a good life with the rest of my collection.
As a writer, and someone trying to deal with the difficulties of my past, all I can do is make up the story and try to move on in the best way possible - and not let other people’s treatment of me get between me and my happiness again.
Michelle, a writer in the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.