On healing and singing in D&D
I’m going through something emotionally difficult lately. Without going into detail, I’ve lost an emotional rock, something that I used to rely on. But for a variety of reasons, I needed to let it go. It needed to happen, for my own sanity and health and wellbeing.
It’s been tough. Tougher than I ever expected. I spent the past two days in and out of a dire emotional state that I haven’t had in over a decade. To call it devastation is probably an understatement. It felt crushing, like my heart was being ripped out of my body, torn apart and then torn apart some more.
But of course, I also needed to keep on living. There is this really interesting survival mechanism that kicks in when you’re in this kind of emotional devastation. After feeling sorry for myself for hours, I felt hungry. So I got up, got dressed and got food. In a way, it was my own body telling me that I needed to move on. It was my own body telling me that I needed to heal to keep on living, to keep going.
For the past two days, I found pockets of happiness amidst the sadness. When the cat did something silly like chasing her own tail, I found myself smiling. When my husband bought me some of my favorite snacks so that I would feel comforted, I felt grateful and loved. When I watched YouTube or Netflix, I was momentarily transported to another mental state.
Last night, my husband and I went to a Dungeons & Dragons one-shot at a local game store (It was part of a Spooky October series and there were four other players plus a Dungeon Master). I decided to play as a bard. My character’s name was Finn (they/them pronouns), and the character back story is that they went from town to town singing songs. Unfortunately, they lost the ability to keep secrets due to a childhood incident, and so all of their songs divulged the secrets of the townsfolk.
I won’t go through what happened in the game, but because I was a bard, I found myself “singing” and performing a couple of times as part of the roleplay. And because I like to make things difficult for myself, I attempted to actually sing, with actual rhymes that I made up on the spot. I didn’t always succeed, but I had a lot of fun, and the DM ended up rewarding me in the end.
For those three hours playing D&D, I left my problems behind. I wasn’t sad at all. I laughed and smiled and felt genuine joy.
That’s not to say that the sadness didn’t come back. I cried earlier this morning, and again a couple of hours ago. I will likely be sad for a very long time.
But based on how I managed to keep going these past two days, I am confident that I’ll be able to heal. It won’t be easy, and there will be days when the sadness will come surging back unexpectedly. But this too shall pass. And I'll be okay. I'll be okay.
See me live!
Just a reminder that I'll be performing this Friday! If you want to see me and my fellow comedy improvisers, come to Feed The God of Comedy on October 13th at 7 p.m. at Endgames Improv 2965 Mission Street in San Francisco. Support local theater and have a fun time in the process!
End Notes
I know this particular issue was more personal than usual, but as I said in a previous entry, I'm essentially using this newsletter as a blog. I'll attempt to get back to livelier topics next time around. In the meantime, be sure to love yourself. Because as Rupaul says, if you can't love yourself, how the hell you gonna love anybody else? Peace.