My first and only true love is reading.

When I read a good book I feel at one with the author.

It seems to me as though the writer is a long forgotten, silent friend who reminds me of some special secret. To reaffirm everything I know already, but didn’t quite know that I knew.

I want to ask questions. I want to examine the author’s thoughts and understand how their mind is wired and what makes one magical word spill out so eloquently in front of the other.

I hear their voice when I read. I feel the energy that existed when each of their simple but profoundly described sentences were written.

And I know that whatever I am feeling, whatever I am taking from their book, will be entirely different to whatever anyone else receives.

Isn’t it just so incredible to consider that we all read books so uniquely?

We meet the author where we are at and not where they are. And really, we will never fully know what mysteries or madness danced in their delicate hearts while they were frantically scribbling away.

Never will we entirely grasp the intensity of what their words meant to them. Or what belief or crippling self-doubt they had in themselves or their art while their mind churned out words and transported them through their ancient typewriter.

We can only guess to what wonders were swirling in the air when the black dramatically appeared on the crisp and fragile white paper.

I vanished in those sheets.

I lost flesh and bones and hid in the spine of a thousand dusty old books.

I could never see where the line was drawn between me, and the very last sentence I read.

I lived lives far more real than my reality. I travelled to Enchanted Forests and lived in a Faraway Tree and whispered wild wishes to the Moon at night.

And all the chapters that existed in all of the cherished books my hopeful hands once held are now floating and ricocheting somewhere inside me. Those words will forever be imprinted in my veins.

A few sentences are tattooed straight across my heart while others burned and etched themselves deeply within my mind.

I can never escape those words. And, my God, I have tried.

A library of fantasy now lives on in my head.

I once believed that my world would be a fairytale and dragonflies and elves would appear to guide my path whenever I called. I thought there were princes, knights and warriors and houses made of stardust and that in the end I would be saved.

I fell dangerously in love with a world of illusion and make believe. It captured me. The vivid colors seeped onto, and stained, my paper-thin skin.

I climbed into the heart of curious tales that fearlessly spoke of chaotic adventures, flying, freedom and the possibility that somewhere out there was my own simple version of happily ever after.

I have closed those books, but I will never lose the feelings they gave me.

Tears dropped and smudged on treasured words. Just to awaken me.

To whisper softly…

That those books were real. But my imagination is realer.

“It is the possibility that keeps me going, and though you may call me a dreamer or a fool or any other thing, I believe that anything is possible.” ~ Nicholas Sparks

 

 

 

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Author: Alex Myles

Editor: Travis May

Image: Flickr/Betsssssy