How I Feel About Books

Those who know me best know that I don’t cry often. I can cry, I just, don’t. I'll withdraw, or glare, scribble madly into a notebook or pace the floor in frustration, but tears are something that usually do not come easily to me. However, this character trait seems null and void when regarding a good book.

I’ve been able to read since I was four. So that basically means, I met my best friends when I was four and have never looked back. I absolutely love books. Growing up, they were my most constant companions. They were never fickle or angry, never unavailable, and never looked to me to be something that I am not. While we may not have had much money for some things, I always had a book. Or rather, a pile of them.

I have shed more tears within the pages of a worthy book than even I can comprehend. I live through books, feel through them, and have had my real-world wounds and misunderstandings healed through them. I have been taught the downfalls of vanity by Dorian Gray, explored the universe with Ender, and felt the losses of Harry Potter. Bella Swan is my friend. I know her innermost thoughts, and see her heart as plain as day. Also among my group of friends are Princess Buttercup and her darling Westley, and the innocent Jonas, as he becomes The Giver. I have lived across the span of centuries, overseen the construction of A Brave New World, and shuddered when confronted with the tactics of the original Big Brother.  As characters have suffered injustices, I have faced their pain. I have been poor, abused, discriminated against, and abandoned through their eyes. I have also overcome opposition, fought the good fight, and unwittingly fallen in love with Peeta Mellark.  

While real life is something that you must wake up to every day, I take my emotional choices much more slowly. You can’t undo harsh words, or undeclare your feelings for someone. People change as their circumstances change, and it can happen in the blink of an eye. In life, I try, and most often times fail, to be as impassive as a rock. My goal is to keep calm, stay strong, and do as little damage as possible. I am not the girl that runs to her hero weak in the knees. I hand out the tissues, pat the backs, and design the plans that will save us. The world is a beautiful, enchanting place, but there are many things within its grasp that are destined to hurt us. Life will separate us, join us together, and leave us crawling on our knees if we’re not careful. It’s a good thing we’re tough.

Between hard bound covers though, is the only place I can ever let my guard down. I release torrents of emotion, littering the dog-eared corners and chapters inside. I have been known to laugh out loud while reading, regardless of my present location. I will storm like a hurricane within a house, pacing angrily, and when asked what’s wrong, I merely stomp over to the book, point at it furiously, and look at you pointedly as if to say, ‘I don’t BELIEVE what he/she thinks they are doing!’ and storm away again in a flurry. Within minutes you will find me huddled up close, my nose buried next to the printed words, seeking redemption, reason, an answer. You had better not interrupt me in my searching either, or pay a most unwelcome price…

Maybe that’s why I love them so much. After all, books are known to give us answers. We can find the answer to anything in the world so long it is prefaced by a title page. Broken hearts, broken lives, broken bones, we bring our souls to a well-worn favorite, and it fits around us like an old sweater. It is always, comfortingly, the same. The message we take from it may be different, who we identify with, who we fear, and who we love. But the story is essentially the same. It’s the most secure thing in my life.

 Meg Murray will always take form in my head, beginning with the words, “It was a dark and stormy night.” And I’ll always read it hearing my own voice read the right pages, and my dad reading on the left. And as we read way past my bedtime, we sneakily insert words into the sentences that don’t actually exist, to see if the other is paying attention.  Then we peek over, real quick, to see if they noticed. When they invariably do, looking back up at you from behind their narrowed eyebrows as they try not to smile, you reread the sentence the way Madeleine L'Engle intended it to be read. With laughter, a sense of adventure, and inescapably, a few tears along the way.