Empathize - Cloud Strife

First on our list is Cloud Strife. Everyone calls him “emo”. While I do not know if this is accurate I can say the boy is severely depressed. Cloud has no intention of hurting himself, yet when faced with guilt he has no intention of fighting to keep himself happy. Let’s examine why this is.
As a child, he had a huge crush on a girl who did not notice him. All he wanted was for Tifa to notice him, and most often she did not. Now, to add to that, he was not a very assertive child; he was not very assertive until much later in his life. He always viewed himself as weak or was always in trouble. An example of the trouble is when Tifa’s mother dies and she and her friends go to Mt. Nibel, Tifa believes she may be reunited with her mother. After her friends leave her alone in their fear, Cloud is the only one to still be following her; yet she doesn’t notice. When the bridge breaks and the adults find them; it is Cloud who is blamed for Tifa’s near death experience. The adults go so far as to yell at Cloud without hearing his side of the story. I would think this is the base of Cloud blaming himself for when things go badly. If you are told something enough, you do start to believe it, and things that are said as children are often conditioned to our personalities as adults.
It is later revealed that as a child, presumably after the mountain incident, he got into a lot of fights. I would guess to be noticed. Then, he up and decides to join Shinra’s SOLDIER. This, of course, is in hopes that Tifa will notice him.
Upon telling Tifa, the two make a promise; that if she is ever in a bind, he has to come and help her. Cloud agrees.
However, once at Shinra he’s not strong enough to actually make it into SOLDIER. He is now faced with a weakness he knew he had but had always seemed to ignore. He just wasn’t strong enough; again, he’s not going to get noticed. Somehow, he befriends Zack, and it seems for once in Cloud’s life he has something good. He even gets to meet and travel with his hero, even though it’s just as a grunt.
At sixteen, they return to his hometown. He now has to face his mother and his crush, but not as the man he had hoped to be. The sting of his “failure” is fresh in his mind as he puts the helmet back on almost immediately after spotting Tifa. Once home, his mother gives him a bit of a hard time, but it’s mostly mother instincts kicking in. She asks him if he’s being treated well and if he has a girlfriend. I would guess, Cloud doesn’t write home often and doesn’t really like to talk about himself. He seems to always think he is failing.
Anyways, a few days in Nibelheim prove to be more than poor Cloud can handle. His hometown is burned to the ground, his mother is killed and everything he knew is now gone. As if the shock of all this wasn’t enough, it was his hero that did it. Joining up with Zack, they head to the reactor to stop Sephiroth. There he finds Tifa mortally wounded, and then sees Zack fail at stopping Sephiroth. By now, rage and adrenaline have taken over and somehow Cloud is able to take the greatest SOLDIER to have ever walked Gaia. His body could not handle the strain and thus, he passed out.
The next few years (the game is not exactly clear on the time frame), his body is experimented on and he under goes the SOLDIER process of Mako and Jenova cell injection. He suffers from severe Mako poisoning.
When Zack breaks them out, he goes to great lengths to keep Cloud safe, and while Cloud was not fully conscious or aware of everything that happened, I do believe he knew that someone was taking care of him. At that moment, Zack was all he had. With Zack being everything he had, it is only natural that Cloud deeply respected him. Cloud doesn’t remember all the details but he does know enough that Zack was there. So, when Zack sacrifices himself to save Cloud, I think that this was beginning of what caused him to be as he was in Advent Children.  Zack’s death and then hearing Tifa’s voice, shock him back into reality and the trauma from his best friend’s death gives him complete amnesia of the Nibelheim and Zack events. He instead, adopts Zack’s assertiveness, as well as his confidence, only remembering moments of strength and placing them in his life. So that for once, he amounted to something.
Assuming that he is helping AVALANCHE in the first mission because Tifa asked him, he is half fulfilling an old promise to look after a friend. Of course, at that point, we don’t know he and Tifa were not close as children, because Tifa stresses that they were close. On the second mission, Cloud refuses at first and is then given a guilt trip to get him to help. Tifa bringing up the promise and turning his back on an old friend, Cloud can’t deny her help because of this. This was wrong of Tifa, at the time; she was positive that Cloud had not been in Nibelheim five years ago. She also had no idea of his trauma. She did, however, know that they were not particularly close. She wanted to keep an eye on him, but took advantage of the fact he did not remember.
So by now, he has lost his hometown, his mother, his best friend, has a shattered image of the man he respected the most and his childhood crush is not being truthful. At the end of that second mission they run into President Shinra, and it clearly bothers Cloud that he is recognized by his Mako eyes, but not remembered. After the attack he falls into the church to meet Aeris for a second time.
She is kind and honest. She also recognizes the Mako glow of SOLDIER and promptly asks Cloud to be her body guard. She is perhaps the first person (at least the first honest) to trust in his strength and skill. He agrees, and she says she’ll pay him in one date. She comments a lot about Zack and how Cloud reminds her of him, even though at the time, she does not fully say who it is.
I think that, yes, Cloud was falling in love with Aeris because she noticed him. She seemed to enjoy his company and she was glad to have him around. I think that Cloud was a bit of healing to Aeris’ broken heart that Zack had never come back. I also think, that while Cloud did not remember a lot about Tifa and his childhood, part of him did remember that she never noticed.
It is in Cloud’s nature to go after those he cares about. He followed Tifa to Mt. Nibel, he then went into Sector 6 and the Don’s mansion with Aeris’ help to save her, after that, it’s to Shinra Headquarters to save Aeris, so it comes as no surprise when he gets “roped” into saving the planet. As the journey progresses he has both Tifa and Aeris now wanting his attention, which is probably very odd for him, although, “being” Zack he seemed quite normal about it.
After learning more about Aeris’ heritage and the promise land, as well as following Sephiroth it becomes very apparent that Cloud doesn’t let anything go. After everything, at the Temple of the Ancient’s he has to deal with the guilt not having a good hold on his mind, apparently Sephiroth can control him.
When he awakes from the shock of what happened Aeris is gone. She’s headed to stop Sephiroth alone; Cloud doesn’t want to lose her so the group follows her.
With Cloud’s luck and history, this ends badly. He loses Aeris to Sephiroth and doesn’t stop the Holy materia from falling into the water. Now grief stricken (again), he has a new resolve to stop Sephiroth. The group now heads to North cave, thoughts of Aeris’ death weighing heavy on their minds.
Cloud is now so far beyond help, he is easily manipulated. He betrays his friends and hands over the black materia to Sephiroth. This is one more thing that is added to his plate, but thanks to another bout of severe Mako poisoning he is lost.
This is only thanks because it starts to open up the door to who Cloud really is. When Tifa falls into the life stream with him, her desire to see him better gets her through. She helps him remember the past and in turn learns a lot of new things about Cloud – his crush on her, his desire to be strong for her, and what really happened in Nibelheim.
Now let’s summarize, in the span of six years, Cloud lost his mother (which is enough to send most people into a fit of grief as well as denial and anger for a lot of their lives), his hometown, was betrayed by his hero, lost his best friend, lived a trauma induced false life, lost one of the loves of his life, betrayed his friends and was faced with his weakness.
It is no wonder that by Advent Children he is secluded and withdrawn. Any normal person would have had a mental breakdown. Taking into account Cloud’s life, one can easily see why he is so depressed and why he refuses to be close to people. He has always longed to be strong, and is often faced with situations where strength is not an option. Situations in which there is nothing that anyone could have done, however, Cloud blames himself. Going back to his childhood, this could be because he was often blamed for things, sometimes things that were out of his control. So, when a similar situation occurs, even if Cloud couldn’t have done anything, it must be his fault, it’s always his fault.
With all of this said, next time you see Mr. Cloud Strife, give him a hug. It doesn’t matter how badly you want to slap him around for blaming himself for things. He really is reacting in a pretty normal way. Just politely remind him, it’s not his fault.