Cryptid Writing Update #1 | Not the Abridged Version
Content Note: This post discusses chronic illness, disability, grief, car accidents, and medical trauma.
Welcome to Bed Jail™ Headquarters
Welcome back to the Cryptid’s Writing Lair.
This is The Crippled Cryptid reporting from Bed Jail™, couch nest, or whatever soft surface currently doubles as headquarters. Luna is stationed beside me like the world’s furriest productivity manager. If I lean too far into the fog, she clocks out of HR and into Emergency Protocol.
This week, the haunted meat suit allowed something sacred:
I wrote.
Not blog words.
Not caption words.
Not “fight with insurance in paragraph form” words.
Story words.
The kind that get screenshots.
The kind that make my chest feel warm instead of afraid.
The kind I wasn’t sure seizures would let me keep.
They’ve taken a lot.
But not this.
And not her.
Every near-1,000-word day lately has had a quiet guardian at my feet. A nudge when my heart rate spikes. A stare when my brain flickers. A firm “Mama, sit down” when I forget that I am, in fact, medically interesting.
If I’m honest?
This feels like my origin story.
This Is My Origin Story (And It Doesn’t Start Where You Think)
I stopped working in 2022.
On paper, that sounds simple. Chronic illness. Disability case. End scene.
It was not simple.
I had worked there since 2017. I thought I loved it. I thought it loved me back. I thought we shared values.
I was wrong.
When my health worsened, I became inconvenient. When an ego bruised, I became disposable.
Customers still message me. They tell me they miss my chalkboard art. My music. My singing behind the counter.
They miss me.
And there is a small, sharp part of me that takes comfort in knowing my absence still echoes. Not because I want revenge. Because it proves I mattered.
But the business itself let me go like I was nothing.
That broke something in me I did not expect to break.
So, you know what? If I have to be the ghost of bitter coffee regret and karma, then so be it. It wouldn’t be the first time. Ask my ex-boyfriend how I know.
I did not just lose a job.
I lost a version of myself I thought was secure.
(A full storytime about that job is coming. It deserves its own excavation.)
2023 Was a Landslide
I won my disability case in 2023.
For many people, that moment is relief. Validation. Safety. Disability wins are victories, but they are also admissions.
For me, it was complicated.
Less than a week later, my grandmother died.
A month after that, someone t-boned my car on the way to the cardiologist. We were chasing answers about my POTS. We were trying to feel better.
Six blocks from the appointment, a tow truck dropped us near a Starbucks. I cried into a peach green tea. M&M held a strawberry refresher. A manager quietly comped both drinks because he could see we were having the worst day of our lives.
We will never forget that kindness.
The accident did something I was not prepared for.
It took reading from me.
It took writing from me.
I would read the same paragraph five times and retain nothing. I would open a document and forget why I was there. Words looked familiar, but they refused to line up.
From September until May, we did not even have a car. Everything felt suspended.
I did not just stop writing.
I stopped recognizing myself.
The Spark Comes Back With Four Paws
Then we got another car. (And a huge part of that is because of my Aunt Dee)
Then we got Luna.
She started alerting.
She started learning.
She started giving me back pieces of autonomy I did not realize I had lost.
Around that time, I renamed the blog. I started documenting my chronic illness journey more intentionally. I wrote about service dog training.
And slowly, something flickered back on.
Not because everything was fixed.
Because I felt safe enough to try.
Safety is fertile ground. Creativity grows where the nervous system is not constantly bracing.
Notes in the Dark
In 2025, I reopened a project I had started in 2022 before everything collapsed.
It’s a YA fantasy about a girl who survives things she should never have to. About illness. About power. About what it means to live in a body that refuses to behave and still be the hero anyway.
I am not giving away the good parts. Not yet.
Earlier this month, one day, I wrote nearly 1,000 words.
Then I did it again.
And again.
I skipped my birthday. Obviously. My aunt sent a banana pudding cake from Nothing Bundt Cakes, and I had family movie night with M&M and the Yard Yeti. It was too important to skip. One night away from the words did not kill me. I promise I made up for it.
Tomorrow, I will do it again.
My goal is 50,000 words.
Do I know if I can do it?
No.
But I survived losing a job I thought defined me.
I survived losing my grandmother.
I survived a car accident that scrambled my brain and my confidence.
I survived thinking I would not make it to 31.
Why would I not at least try?
For the first time, I am not racing a clock.
I am building something I plan to stay long enough to finish.
And this time, I am not negotiating my survival to do it.
Writing Pulse: Week One
Weekly Starting Word Count: 0 (starting fresh, clean slate)
Current Word Count: 2,374
Total Words Written This Week: 2,374
Almost 1,000 words a day at the time of writing this.
More by the time that it’ll be posted, I’m sure.
Not because I forced it.
Because I felt safe enough to try.
That matters.
Because safe isn’t a word that most of us know these days.
Especially if you’re living in the U.S.A. like we currently are.
Holding the Perimeter
If you are creating through brain fog, pain flares, medication haze, or the quiet fear that your body might steal something you love, I see you.
Progress does not always roar.
Sometimes it rests its chin on your knee and waits until you are steady.
That is what Luna does for me.
Every origin story has a catalyst.
Mine has four paws and a very strict attendance policy.
Service dogs do not just retrieve items or open doors. Sometimes they hold the perimeter so creativity can exist safely inside it. Every word I write in this season of my life has paw prints somewhere in the margins.
If you are cheering from Bed Jail™, from hospital rooms, from couches layered with heating pads, I am grateful you are here.
Love you.
Now say it back.
–Sky
Still writing. Still weird. Still supervised.
🔗 https://linktr.ee/skylanarissa
There’s never pressure to donate. Reading, sharing, or simply staying is more than enough.
If you’d like to support the long, slow work of staying alive, stable, and mobile:
💜 https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-skys-journey-to-health-and-mobility
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