I know what you're probably thinking. "That seems like a massive overstatement." "How much does your life have to suck?" "It's just a game dude." ¬.¬ Be me. It's fall, 2014. My enlistment with the United States Marine Corps has come to an end. I was a Combat Engineer with 1st CEB, which means my job - more or less - was to walk around at the front of patrols, looking very IED's with a hardly working metal detector, blowing up doors and walls with c-4 and other loud bangy things or driving around in a truck, counting down the chow hall visits and minutes until I get dusted by a VBIED or some Yellow Jugs filled with ANFO. I did two combat deployments to Afghanistan, going to some of the les savory and not-so 5 star areas within the country (Kajaki, Musa-Qala, etc...) for some very nice camping trips. There was a lot that happened in those 4 years. My life was flipped upside down in so many different ways I still hardly remember everything that happened. It's only a few years into my marriage and I'm realizing that I was a complete moron and did an incredibly boot thing by bother with buying a woman a ring, and I started watching my marriage fall apart. On top of that, I was stuck in California with no money, literally on the opposite side of the US from my home. My buddy (Who is still in the USAF) told me about some new game coming out from the creators of Halo. Enter Destiny 1. This game took my life by storm. NEVER had I EVER stayed up for almost weeks on end to play a game like this one before. Everything about it was all I ever wanted in a video game, and my friends got to play it with me, which made it even better. Now at this point in time, I was really trying to learn what it was like to just be a normal person. To wake up in the morning, suddenly without any of my old buddies from the Corps around. Truly alone. Sleeping brought nightmares mixed with bad memories, being awake brought dangerous and destructive thoughts. There were times I sat in my room, looking at the ceiling fan and just... planning. *DING* "Hey man, lets do the Vault of Glass!" Those messages from my friends? Those really pulled me back. Being [Expletive[ deep in Atheon's face brought me out of that darkness and gave me something to work for. Gave me another thing to think about. It gave me a small, flicker of purpose that brought me farther away from where my mind was trying to go. Here I am now. I'm 29 years old, Season of the Worthy is coming to a close and the Darkness is closing in. This... was a long road. Destiny hasn't been just a game to me in years, I grew up as a person with this game. I saw people come and go, enjoy the game and dismiss it later. But here I was, still playing. Now this is going to sound corny as [severe expletive] but, Destiny was more about fighting my OWN Darkness than it was combating some over-arching, paracausal bad guy. To me, all of those DLC's and Seasons that we didn't love, didn't really matter. So what if I never got to run Scourge, or get my Izy catalyst. I got to exterminate Dreggs on the EDZ while they were out getting Ether groceries and that -saved my life- Now I want you guys to post what memories of Destiny brought you from the Darkness. What did you do that made life a little less miserable, just for a few moments? Amidst all of the negativity, lets give them some Light back. Bungie, you guys saved my life. Thank you.