Dungeons & Dragons was my saving grace.

When I brought up the idea of playing Dungeons and Dragons with my uncle and cousin in December 2019, I never expected it to be my saving grace for the next year and a half.

I was really into playing board games when I was younger and I was intrigued by the idea of playing D&D. I remember passing by the aisles of Barnes & Noble and seeing all these boxes with different D&D expansions. I thought of it as the ultimate board game.

It was December of 2019 and one of my uncles mentioned the fact that he was playing D&D with some of his friends in Washington D.C. He said it was becoming the highlight of his months.

After having long conversations about the game, in the end me, my sister, my cousin, and my other uncle decided that we were going to start our own D&D campaign. We started creating our characters in January of 2020. We didn't realized how elaborate it was going to be to play.

Then the pandemic hit.

No one was leaving their houses and, of course, that included us. We stopped seeing each other and months passed before we were reunited. In September of 2020, we found out that one of my cousins had played the game before and was interested in DMing (being our Dungeon Master aka the orchestrator of our adventure) for us! Right after we found out that information, we hopped right into it.

It was a little tricky figuring out the roleplaying, how to fight, play, and survive our first campaign, Lost Mine of Phandelver. While I may be Melina in this world, in D&D I was Valyria. A 5'3'' silver haired, red eyed Wood Elf rogue. I may be a little bit biased, but I have to say my character is pretty kickass. I was highly perceptive, and even though I was a rogue, I sucked at picking locks. I may not be the strongest of the group, but I can speak 6 different languages, and know my way around with duel daggers. I knew I was going to enjoy playing the game, I never thought that I would genuinely fall in love with it the way I did.

It turned into something I really looked forward to. The highlight of that week every time we played.

My mental health was really struggling. Most places were shut down and we were supposed to stick to small groups. I was rarely seeing my friends and the work-to-home routine was wearing on me.

Playing D&D was my opportunity to socialize with my uncle and cousins but, even more so, it gave me the chance to escape.

For those of you who are readers and gamers, you can relate to the escapism that both of those bring. I relied on both heavily during the pandemic, but there was something about D&D that was better. There was something about the fact that you could do anything in the game, and I mean anything, and it could either be the best decision ever or the worst. We've convinced Bugbears to move into our haunted mansion instead of fighting them. We also attempted to serenade undead with Hello by Lionel Richie into...I actually don't know what we were trying to do with that one. Safe to say that it didn't work too well in our favor.

While there were tense situations, the game wasn't stressful. In actuality, they rejuvenated me from the exhausting pandemic days.

It's almost a year later since we started consistently playing, and even though I now see friends & am able to go out and do things, I still find a lot of comfort in playing D&D. I hope it's something that I'll be able to play for many more years to come.

Edited by Sofia Pena