#weeklywritingchallenge

Thank you for participating in the previous weekly writing challenge(s) that i've hosted!

This week's challenge will be featuring 15 different genre prompts!

(March 17- March 25)

**edit: i am extendign this challenge to monday because i will not be home until Monday afternoon! happy writing!

(check here for pervious weeks)

This week deals with A/B/O prompts & Mythical creature prompts as well.

prompts are below the cut!

“What is your decision, Lord Harcourt? Profess your loyalty to Grand Magistrix Elisande or treason? And death. For those are the options that lie before you.”

Tension was thick in the air like a fog that had rolled in the moment Captain Aethelan had stormed into the courtyard with a handful of soldiers including the notorious magus hunters that Dyra feared the most.

She gripped her husband’s hand. It was cold and clammy with sweat. She didn’t remember him feeling that way before, but then again, they didn’t touch much. Or at all, for the last twenty or so years.

Her husband pursed his lips, glowing eyes flitting over the assembled. They had spoken of this moment many times before, Dyra urging her husband to stand strong and flee the city if they must. But he was a coward, or so she reminded him repeatedly. He always had been. And something in her heart died, perhaps the last vestiges of love she had for him, when he responded.

“We will do whatever you say. Lady Harcourt and I. Of course we are loyal to Elisande.” He stepped forward and immediately stumbled back a step at her resistance. She stood stock still like a stubborn goat and raised her eyes to meet her husband’s.

I skipped my typical writing session yesterday, as I ran out of time — getting a great start to my new years resolution! It’s OK, though, I promised myself I would do it on Monday night instead. I think as long as I do it each week, the day of the week shouldn’t really matter. 

I have been thinking a lot about the mixed messages I have been receiving (or allowing myself to hear). It seems as though every piece of advice or guidance has a complete opposite piece of advice or guidance, and I have heard both of them in rapid succession. You have to put yourself out there to find love, but also it will find you when you’re not looking. You have to want a relationship, but you also have to give yourself the love and acceptance you crave from a relationship. You have to commit to self improvement and do the work, but also you are enough just as you are. For someone who regularly feels like she doesn’t belong or know what she’s doing, like she is not certain about her choices, the advice pinballs around and I feel like I have to pull all the right levers to achieve the right balance. 

Let’s not even get started with the painful, problematic discourse comparing single people to real estate — that if they’re on the market for too long, there must be a reason. It feels like society is just trying to find nice ways to get me to work on myself, or to accept myself, to distract me from some defectiveness I cannot detect. 

The other day I was thinking about what I would need to give up if I were to be in a serious relationship, of the variety where the person would live with me. I have so many beautiful moments of solitude. Talking to myself in the bath. Dancing to oldies around my apartment, my swiffer a microphone. Allowing my legs to creep across the mattress until I am diagonally across it, hogging the covers. Watching whatever I want, all the time, without having to wait for anyone else. Taking phone calls on speaker. Yelling at the TV. Developing parasocial relationships with my favorite podcast hosts and playing them while I shower, do dishes, cook. Walking around the lake alone. Embarrassing workouts to early aughts pop-punk hits in my living room. Checking myself out in the mirror. 

I truly love these moments of solitude. I don’t know what I would do without them. When it is just me, I can romanticize them as much as I want, whatever magic I am feeling envelops me, overcome. Feeling that same sort of magic with another person in the everyday seems unlikely. I don’t want to give it up. As much as I want to be held, to care for someone else, to share my life — I love my independence and my little rituals, and sometimes they feel mutually exclusive. I don’t know if it’s unrealistic for me to hope to find someone who feels the same way. 

It all started with my bike crash on November 15, 2020. Poorly paved roads, a rookie’s bad luck, and perhaps a little inattentiveness led to my suddenly going from 30 to 40 miles per hour downhill to hurtling over the handlebars, breaking the fall with my face. I got lucky in every possible way: I was with a friend, who called another friend with a car to come get my bike; people pulled over to make sure I was OK; I received fantastic care in the emergency room (including from a very handsome resident, who must have been my age, who sewed up my busted lip and assured me I would still be pretty); besides a busted face, broken tooth, and some scrapes, I had no serious injuries. The week or so after the accident were dark and difficult, my body hurt and my bruises had bruises. I couldn’t bear to look at my own face in the mirror. The black bruising had swollen my left eye shut. 

It has been seven weeks, and I haven’t ridden the bike since then. I’m scared. I had a panic attack two days before Christmas, and that set off a lot of new fears. I am also scared my heart is defective, skipping beats or fluttering and jolting me out of bed. I am scared the random aches in my leg are a blood clot, I am on two forms of birth control, anyway (a fact that feels utterly ridiculous in general, much less in the tenth month of global pandemic). I have stayed awake until 2 and 3 in the morning, or jolted up at that time gasping. My mouth has gotten dry, and each time I have tried to eat something in the last two days, I have felt a (likely imaginary) piece of food stuck and been afraid I am going to choke. 

And I am choking, metaphorically. Failing to perform. I do everything “right:” I exercise, I meditate, I eat relatively healthy, I try to get enough sleep. Hydrate, walk, journal, therapy. Since the accident, it has been harder, but I have been trying. But the coping mechanisms I have in my arsenal are no match for the swell of anxiety that has built up in the last seven weeks. The accident, the pandemic, work drama, getting a new job, dealing with the holidays away from my family. Like the wave in the distance that looks manageable, that you’re pretty sure you can withstand, but it surprises you, wipes you out. The fear of being jerked around under the foam, gasping for breath, water up your nose and your perspective spun around, you’re dizzy when you get back up. It’s been one of those waves. 

Anxiety is an old friend, a part of my identity. I have learned how much it does for me and how it keeps me safe, and in understanding this, worked to keep it happy, to keep the waves small and steady so I don’t get bowled over. And it is hard not to feel like I’ve failed when I’ve gotten wiped out. I don’t want to say I “let it” get so big — it’s not my fault the circumstances that packed themselves into the final weeks of 2020. My defenses and my rituals were all working well before the wave got too big for them to handle on their own, and I got knocked over. 

I have decided to expand my arsenal, and am, for the first time in my 27 years, taking psychiatric medication. Despite my support for friends and family in using medication, I have been hypocritical and judgmental toward myself in “needing” it. But I know now it is just another tool in the toolbox, one that I hadn’t had a job for yet. Until now. 

Weekly Writing Challenge 

This year I resolved to set aside some time — half an hour or so — each week to write creatively. I have never had a habit, rather tended to write when I needed to, or felt so moved, feeling as though I were channeling Hemingway (''write hard and clear about what hurts'') (I haven’t really read any Hemingway. I can’t recall if I finished The Sun Also Rises or not. Is he cancelled?). 

The goal is to commit something to paper that I can publish here on my writing blog each week. Eventually I will decide if this blog is a space I want to share, but for now, it’s pretty much just me and some random Tumblr followers. I find I mostly write autobiographical essays; personal think pieces; but sometimes, what I’ll work on/post will be screenplay or novel snippets.