I love story telling.

It’s been a huge part of my life for as long as I can remember. Sure I remember hearing stories during bedtime when I was a smaller spud, but there is something truly amazing about the magical abilities of stories to this day.

Nothing was more devastating than when I temporarily lost the ability to immerse myself in this magic after I suffered a massive hit to the head that exasperated my anxiety to the point that I couldn’t write more than a sentence without experiencing the fun times that is a panic attack.

As someone whose entire purpose was communication in some capacity, this was hard to bounce back from. I genuinely didn’t think I would ever recover from it. But then, I was asked by my friend if I was interested in playing some Dungeons and Dragons.

All I knew about D&D is that was associated with the stereotypical nerds and somehow dice came into play. I wasn’t, and still am not, a fan of math, so I was apprehensive at first. But I love my friends from grad school dearly and would at the very least try something out of respect.

Did I love it right away? No lol I couldn’t understand this character I was given and trying to figure out our group dynamic beyond the general equation of beat up on goblins was trickier than expected. I gave them my own spin on this character and spent a lot of time trying to figure out who the heck this dwarf cleric was.

I couldn’t figure out why my own character annoyed the hell out of me. Was it a result of my brain trying to restart that creative flow or was I just bad at D&D? After some deeper reflection, I realized how much of this dislike stemmed from my own dislike of who I was as a person.

Shark Potato the Third, or Sharpo, was the embodiment of everything I was struggling with. At this point in my life, I felt like my purpose was exclusive to loyalty to others and the only thing I was good at, I was suddenly unable to do.

The pre-determined back story for this character is that they were a former soldier/mercenary type that, for whatever reason, was no longer enlisted and just doing the original task because of familial obligations.

Things got interesting when I developed Sharpo more fully, aka when I really focused on which clerical domain they were following. I was turned off to the idea of just sticking with what the game provided as a domain and decided to get a little brave and try something new – like the grave domain. I found myself drawn to the appeal of the god Kelemvor. This neutral figure was all about keeping the balance of life and death.

This let me explore the idea of the unwilling cleric, someone who isn’t necessarily all for the god they are following, but will pay attention at the very least. The idea was that the incident that had Sharpo released from their services was they called out a fellow mercenary for exploiting their power. The other person wasn’t too fond of this and ended up sucker punching Sharpo that resulted in the scar above their eye. This defense of an unknown person resulted in Kelemvor’s interest and Sharpo was then, unwillingly, chosen.

Sharpo was a great lesson in growing as a person. They couldn’t fathom the fact that they were chosen because they had the potential to be something good. They couldn’t understand that just because they were doing something different than what they expected at this specific point in their life, they were still exactly where they needed to be.

I expected my life to look entirely different at 23. At certain low points, I didn’t even believe that I would make it to that age. I felt low for the fact I wasn’t the storyteller I was hoping to be by that age.

Sharpo and I pushed back against what the universe was pushing us towards. We both are definitely not stronger than the will of the universe, and suffered for our actions. They saw their loved ones perish because they failed to do their duty while I fell deep into a chasm of depression that I’ve only just started to climb out of.

After being humbled and realizing the amount of potential in both of our lives, we began to grow again.

I didn’t expect a game I played with my friends to teach me about being responsible and that taking care of myself also included believing in who I was and who I could be. There’s no shame in being responsible for yourself and trying to find that balance to become the best version of the person you see in the mirror.

Maybe one day I’ll step back into this dwarf’s shoes again. I’ve come to realize I’m also a healer at heart, so I definitely wouldn’t mind adventuring as my favorite cleric in the future. But for now, their warhammer is shelved until duty calls once more.