Finding Myself
It was after a long day at school that I lied down on my bed and placed a cup of green tea and mint on the table next to me. I shifted in bed to find the most comfortable position that would help me detach myself from my surroundings and wander off to another surreal world where nothing is impossible. As soon as I picked up the book and flipped through the pages, I could feel myself departing from this world’s dimensions to another world that had no dimensions. I could see Mary, Tanya and Zoe sitting on the couch in the living room chatting and laughing in Danielle Steel’s world, “The Ranch”. I was there with all my senses; I could smell the three girls’ coffees and taste the sourly sweet blueberry topping on the cheesecake on Tanya’s plate. It was as if I was there in the same living room, sitting across the coach and sharing the moment with the three of them, yet they could not see me or feel my presence.
I can still remember this moment when I flipped the page to find out that the novel came to an end. I remember feeling as empty and torn as if I was saying my goodbyes to the three girls since I was going back to my world. I could feel my heart tightening at the bitter truth of coming back to my own reality; I wanted to live in that world and never leave, enjoying the mix of emotions that would end up with happiness thereafter. Â It was that precise moment and that split of a second, when I felt like I lost a piece of myself to that novel. Even though I went back to real life again, I was sure that a small tiny part of me stayed with the three girls and enjoyed the morning coffees with them every day.
From that moment onwards, I felt desperate about losing myself to novels. I could not stop myself from reading more even though I hated losing parts of myself to them. It was an addiction that clawed my heart tightly; the pleasure wrestling the wrenching pain to win over. This battle got the best of me one day, so I grabbed a piece of paper and started scratching furiously to let off the steam building within me after finishing “Stolen” by Lesley Pearse. I could feel that the blood was boiling through my body as I felt another piece of me was “stolen” away. Suddenly, I found myself scribbling down how I felt, and so, I went on writing for more than an hour about how frustrated I was and how much I craved to live in every novel I used to read. I remember feeling relieved after I wrote all that down.
From that moment onwards, I started regaining every piece of myself that I lost before through writing about other worlds I believed existed.Â
Writing was my means to find myself.