I lived like Ethan Winters for a week to survive the horrors of the holidays

polygon.com:

I’m not shy about hating the holiday season. Valrhona dark chocolate smells good when it’s melted with milk, and my heart glows when ornaments leave sugar-sized glitter in my palm, but there’s nothing else in it for me. The sun sets around 4:30 p.m. in New York, and I can no longer tell if the rot under my windowsill is lamb over rice or chicken. My family is abnormal (let’s leave it at that). But I’m getting bored of my yearly misery.

I know what I need to do — I’ll spend a week living like Resident Evil protagonist Ethan Winters.

I would be learning how to cope from the best. And the games are obviously festive. Resident Evil 7 is about Thanksgiving because there are plates of gray goop, Resident Evil Village is about Christmas because there’s snow — Ethan navigates the abject horror in both those games unbelievably well. I know that first-person view doesn’t let you see it, but I think he’s smiling with a cigar in his mouth. It’s time to go full method actor to survive the holidays.

In Resident Evil, Ethan squirts liquid onto his bloodied or, sometimes, completely severed hand in order to heal. This seems like an inherently healthy coping mechanism to me, so I went for it.

I don’t own anything that might constitute “healing liquid” — maybe the cloudy fluid gathering at the top of my Greek yogurt tub, but I’m saving that for later. So I opted for accessibility and ran my left hand under the faucet every time I felt upset.

At my roommate Ben’s suggestion, I started using a water bottle for scene accuracy. I poured cold water from my metal S’well knockoff, and my hand started to get really wet. Still, I got bolder, rinsing my hand at every opportunity. Standing around? Rinse. Peeling potatoes? Rinse (but that time it