'And why do you read?'
Books are my coping mechanism, my way of dealing with this world. The way I deal with reality can be classified in two ways, Procrastination and Escapism. Books offer me a way of doing both. Do not cut off my escape routes. You have no idea how dangerous I can become. I am a chameleon, taking on a new mindset, blending into each new world, with every book I pick up.
I have experienced countless things, met numerous people, and have weapons you couldn't even begin to fathom. Imagination child, is something that cannot be held back by the scruff of its neck. Reality isn't black and white, and neither am I when it comes to dealing with it.
I live in fragments, a hundred futures, a hundred pasts, and a hundred presents, all of which may happen, may have happened and are happening right now. Yet, in each of these fragments, lies a whole. I do not lose my sense of self with all of this fragmentation. I am each of them, and they are each, me. They do not merely make up my identity when pieced together. Even in pieces, I am whole.
I read to feel. I read to be free. I read to be more myself. I read because I need to, just as I need to breathe. A simple natural thing, without which I'd be dead and without which, I'd rather be dead. I'd put off breathing to read. If I die, I shall have but one regret, that I haven't read as much as I could have and should have. I read to love. I read to find a family. I read to lose myself. I read to find myself. I read to find an echo of the empty, hidden places in my soul in someone else's writing.
I read to die. To die again and again and finally, to be born anew. I read to metamorphose into someone I once thought I could never be. I read to grow, both roots and leaves. I read to dance, to rain, to storm with the fury of a thousand passions. I read to break, myself and my heart, over and over again. I read to know, to try and satisfy a burning curiosity that, I know, can never be quenched.
I read to cry, the expression of a thousand unfulfilled wishes and broken dreams. I read to hope, to feel wonder, awe and to marvel. I read to see the world with the eyes of a crone, a young man or woman, and a child, all at the same time. I read to laugh, an effusion of happy memories, events that never really took place, except in my mind, and there alone.
I read to get lost in the magic that beautifully crafted sentences evoke. I read to revel in beautiful poetry and prose. I read to get lost in the music of the rhythm of words. I read to live. And I shall live a life all the more richer for those friends I've gathered along the way, contentedly gathering dust in twenty odd cardboard boxes in the attic.
