Reality has never pleased me as much as living it through character’s in compelling novels. I reckon some people may label it as fantasy, others may just call it fiction, however, I would just rather label it as an escape. Opening a book and reading the first sentence may be one of the most gratifying feelings I could experience over and over again without undergoing any monotony. Every book brings forth a new beginning. It unlocks my mind and prepares me to live moments, maybe personal or foreign, that will elicit sensations of delight, fear, and/or sorrow within me. That’s what all books bring to me, an escape to liberate and imagine letters that someone else has arranged for me.
I recall the first time a book genuinely aroused all my senses as I read it. Handle with Care by Jodi Picoult was the barrier breaker. A novel that had nothing to do with me, nothing that even had the minimal propinquity to any of my life experiences, yet the author was capable of submerging me into every sentence with, not only great eloquence, but vivid detail that established a true connection between the unfamiliar world of the book and myself. It told the story of a young girl suffering from osteogenesis imperfecta (bone disease) and how her mother struggled to have enough economic stability to take care of her necessities. Having never lived that, Jodi Picoult built a scenario in my mind that played like a movie. I could hear, smell, taste, see, and touch everything the characters did because every word stimulated reactions within me. For a while, my eyes were opened but I couldn’t perceive anything else but the conversion of letters to images. It was a utopic state, one that I always find myself in as I grab a book to read.
That’s it. That’s the most serene place I could find myself in – that liberating state of mind granted to me by any work of literature. The worst of days could be unraveling around me, yet I could just escape everything, mute the world, with the opening of a book. Tranquility, silence, a runaway from the hectic state of over thinking. Forgetting about everything for a while and letting go of it to dive into someone else’s mind, someone else’s life. Even now, it’s hard to believe how something as simple as the stringing of words, could bring so much peace. How, as I sit to unravel a new novel, I mute the world with the flip of a page. How I can be “within and without,” as Nick Carraway says in The Great Gatsby. How I can zone out from what is said to be reality, yet feel so existent.
In my case, books are my reality. They make me feel more alive, they make me experience indescribable moments, they make me feel an infinity of emotions, they make me someone I could never imagine myself being otherwise. Nonetheless, they make me who I am today, because, with every word I’ve ever read, I’ve learned something new, experienced something new. I’ve stored every moment in my mind, like a locked treasure that only I can open.