Lost and Found In The Pages

She closed the book. Silent. Digesting. She loved to read, devouring the pages faster than an army of ants at a picnic. It wasn't a new love. It was timeless, true, reliable love. She smiled as she thought back to the early days.

Her school had a small library, musty and no bigger than a classroom, but to her it was everything. Every time she was in there she felt like Belle from Beauty and the Beast reading the same series multiple times and loving it just as much. She would sit on the floor near the shelves reading the backs of a pile of books while the boys goofed off and the girls pretended not to be staring at the boys. The walls could have crumbled but it didn't matter, she was already lost in a world outside of hers before she even opened the cover.

She thumbed the pages of the book, breathing in its smell on the breeze. Her heart quickened for a moment. As she traveled backwards through the pages of her own story she remembered how books were her escape from everything. From the school work, the fact that she was not and would most likely never be considered someone cool, the responsibilities of being the oldest child, and just always feeling different like she just never quite belonged.

Friday night would roll around and she would stuff a blanket under the mattress of the top bunk, letting it hang and cover the front of the lower bunk. "Get out!" she'd snap as one of her siblings tried to enter her safe space. She chuckled as she thought about how absolutely dorky she was. She would crawl behind that blanket and it was like crawling through the wardrobe into Narnia. She'd turn on her book light and let it lead the way. With each page she turned she moved farther and farther from everything else and into a world where she could be anything, say anything and feel anything.

This everlasting love of reading allowed her to imagine a world where she was smart and witty. A world that was filled with mystery and adventure. Don't get it wrong, growing up in the city in a small apartment, with a big family opened itself up to adventure, but this was different. This was in her control. She could pick up a book of her choosing and transport herself anywhere and become anyone. Kids often don't feel like they have control. "Do your homework, clean your room, help your sister," as children life is just full of demands, but her books were hers and hers alone. When she read she imagined that it was all different, she was different, the world was different. She felt a little sorry for herself as she thought about the naivety of it all. She knew now that world could be a cruel place.

She had learned from books that things change and her own life was no different. There were times when college and work offered her no time to read for pleasure and while she didn't open a book she held close to her heart the stories she had read. She imagined each girls night out or study group as one more chapter in her story. Each hour a page. Each chapter an experience. It was exciting, even she didn't know how the story would end.

Like the the page turns of a book though, time passes, and she had learned that even the best stories their are struggles. She inhaled slowly remembering her own previous chapters. Some were great while others left her in tears. Some moved slow with little happening only to be followed by multiple chapters that she couldn't put down.

Soon though those exciting chapters felt like they were fading. Marriage, divorce, work, groceries, bills, house cleaning, the list goes on and on. She didn't need a crazy plot twist, she had had plenty of those, but she again longed for the safe adventures that fell in between the pages.

It had been a while, but that feeling of picking out a book, the excitement, the way the pages smell when they're brand new, it all came back to her. This time around though she felt that the books weren't just an escape or a roadmap to what she wanted, they were a key. While time and experience are what fills the bindings of a book, sometimes in life they can wear a heart down and hers was no different. It was hard to let herself feel, it was hard to let herself love, it was hard to get lost in a moment like she used to. She missed it.

As she picked up the first book she had read in years she could feel it right away. This wasn't the book romance of her younger years, it was different. Opening books again was like slipping a key into the parts of herself she had locked away.

Its funny she thought how all we want is to grow up and become adults. But often as adults we become so robotic and monotonous. The day in and day out of life dulling our sparkle. We don't see it right away. It's not until we feel it or rather we stop feeling that we realize we are lost.

Reading again was healing. She wasn't holding back, she wasn't protecting herself and as she fell in love with her characters. She was finally allowing herself to exercise the heart that she had been so scared to take back out. She began looking at each day as a new chapter.

She could again see how her own life was a novel filled with love, adventure, pain and pleasure. It had the makings of being her favorite book of all.

"Reading isn’t just a pastime but a lifeline—books serve as both sanctuary and catalyst, allowing us to escape, heal, and rediscover parts of ourselves we’ve locked away. By returning to that 'safe adventure' between the pages, we reclaim wonder, creativity, and the courage to write—and live—our own next chapters."