Discovering my love for writing fantasy

My day-to-day routine of waking up, going to the gym, and then to work is an exhausting merry-go-round of frustration and fried nerves. In the beginning, and even months into this seemingly endless routine, I thought there was no real way to destress. I would go on walks, draw, listen to music, take warm baths with candles lit all around me – but nothing seemed to work.

I constantly felt frustrated and exhausted. I felt like relaxing at all was completely out of the question for me, like there was nothing that could soothe the stress of my every day. I was prone to zoning out while working, thinking up fantastical scenarios, or even just daydreaming about my most recent read. But when my father died in February… I stopped dreaming and fantasizing. I couldn’t escape into my imagination anymore.

My world went numb and so did I. This feeling that felt like nothing, went on for what felt like an eternity but was really only about a month… until I found a new book series, one that, completely unknown to me, would change everything for me.

I stumbled on A Court of Thorns and Roses while mindlessly scrolling through Instagram during my lunch break while I was just trying to pass the time until I had to get back to the soul-sucking grind. It had been a while since I had found a new series, or even just read a new book. So, I purchased it on my phone, starting the book on my break.

It seemed okay at first, and I wasn’t too upset when I had to put it down at the end of my break. But when I picked it back up after work while laying on the couch, thoughtlessly staring at the ceiling… I didn’t put it back down until I finished it. Reading that book awoke a deep-seated love for something I hadn’t done since High School. Writing.

Almost immediately after finishing the book, I jumped from my couch and picked up my laptop, opening up the document of the last book I had worked on a year prior. It was a few pages of poorly written paragraphs. The scenes weren’t detailed, and it seemed like I hadn’t even tried. So that night, at 8 PM, I decided to start it over, and finish it.

Over a course of three months, this small, horribly written little book, turned into 160,000 words of my soul. I poured everything I had into it during any free second I could find. I built a world and characters that I thought of constantly, that I felt were real in their own right. And as I finished that last chapter, I felt something within me click.

For my entire life, I always looked for what might make me feel full, feel complete. There was nothing else I did that made me feel so right, nothing that made me feel more at peace, than writing. With every word I put on paper, I felt my body and mind relax for the first time since I graduated high school.

I didn’t feel numb anymore. Writing made sense to me. No matter what happens during my day-to-day routine, writing is there to help me ground myself. My book, my world, my characters… make me feel things other than stress and frustration. I feel happiness, sadness, love… I feel what they feel. I cry when they cry, I smile when they smile.

Writing quickly went from something I did during every free second to help destress from everything I experienced in my day, to what I want to do for the rest of my life. Writing is one of the only things that when I’m doing it, it doesn’t feel like I’m working. I could do it for days and weeks on end, and I still feel like I’m having fun, even knowing I hope to turn it into a career one day.

Before writing, self-care to me never seemed to work. No matter what I did, I always felt like I was getting nowhere. Stress and frustration consumed me day and night. Even sleeping was a challenge with all of the things I felt… But when I rediscovered writing, when I could put all of these images in my head into words and my friends read them and told me how amazing they thought my writing was… I felt a different kind of relief wash over me.

Every day I write a minimum of 500 words for a book or story. Every day I unwind from a long day at work by spending time with the characters I’ve created in a world all my own. If I had been asked a year ago what I do to unwind and destress, I would have shrugged and told you I didn’t do anything. Rediscovering my passion for writing had ignited my imagination in ways I never thought possible.

In doing so, I have found beauty in things I never saw before, and have found a way to release the tension I get in everyday life.