Thank you so much for writing this comment <3 We're really happy you like the game!
Being able to choose gender and preferences is something we're always happy to see in a game like this ourselves so including it was one of the first decisions we made. And it's great to hear that it's appreciated!
We're sorry to hear that you are in a difficult situation right now and wish you the best of luck that it will get better soon!
Escapism is something probably most people deal with in some way and parts of Teal's and Joyce's views on it definitely come from personal experiences. So it was important to us not to paint it as either entirely bad or good since there are usually more complex issues involved.
Even if the game may have failed at serving as a distraction we hope that this aspect wasn't entirely unpleasant for you :'D
The ending of part 1 is always like this. It would be nice if there was a way to change it but since the events of part 2 are affected by it quite a bit, it would have been too big of a branching point for us to handle.
And don't worry, Joyce is romanceable and if you choose to look for them, they'll appear again in part 2 ;)