When I was young, I would hurt sometimes so badly I would panic, then hide in my room, wrapped up tight in protective clothing, deep beneath the covers. I fled the pain I could not bear by burying myself in the stories told in multitudes of books.
Some stories so deeply resonated with me I read them over and over, and I realize now these tales provided a solution to the same loneliness and isolation I was feeling. It was fiction, of course, and I couldn’t follow the same path my erstwhile heroine would, so I lost myself in fantasy.
It was a lonely life, but a safe one.
Today I still like to lose myself in novels, but it isn’t the same. Life has taught me certain realities, and one of them is that rarely do events follow in a logical progression as they do in storytelling. Nor do problems resolve them in a straightforward manner.
Yet if the books don’t provide some sort of conclusion, I’m frustrated. I still want to end with resolution. It doesn’t have to be a happy ending, but it should be a logical one. The story should be told.
I cannot flee my pain, but I can find respite from it in certain escapes, and I look for particular qualities in those methods of safety.
Read any good books lately?
Photo courtesy of Pixabay
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