Each book you pick up impacts your life in some way without you realizing it. There was a time when reading was not something I loved to do. I despised sitting in one place for long periods of time with easy distractions. The thought of having to focus on each word on the paper in order to understand the story was exhausting. Of course that was before I could absorb information without necessarily reading each and every word written. Then as I matured I decided that reading a book wouldn’t hurt from time to time, so in the summer of seventh grade I picked up The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen.
That book was the gateway to my life now. I became so immersed in the characters' lives that I was constantly wanting to know what happened next. Before the start of eighth grade I had read every book written by that author, the way she wrote her stories with so much meaning, other than a happy ending, enticed me. I researched other books and their authors that summer, trying to find the genre I would love. What I did not know at the time was that there is so much more than the general genres you are taught in school. I found books after books that drew me in, not caring that I would cancel plans to stay in and finish a book. My love for reading only grew from there as it became more than a hobby.
Escape. Reflecting back on when I started reading and how I jumped into books so fast I realized reading was an escape for me. I can physically sit in a room of screaming people or all alone and mentaly not be there. I become so immersed with the characters actions, the placement of the story, the plot twists that I forget about time. I forget about my worries that cloud my mind. I forget about the uneasy relationship I have with my family. I just forget long enough to relax and take the pain of the world off my shoulders, even if it's for just a chapter. I find myself in the characters I read, relating to their experiences, truma, or dreams. And to read about a character and think that you are even somewhat like them gives you hope on the darkest of days that you can move forward.
What was once a hobby has now taken over my life in one of the best ways possible. It hasn’t just been reading though; I fell in love with writing. After reading enough books to give me a headache at times, I realized it wasn’t just the story which captured the reader but the way that the story was told. Slowly I became comfortable enough with myself to start writing short stories or plan a book that I will never write. It was rough as I started to write as I was holding myself to the standard of these forty year old authors who had been writing for years when I had only been writing for weeks. I hated how the story would be stiff and not flowing together as it should have been, but it made me understand that to get a story to flow you had to believe in what you were writing. Good stories weren’t made out of thin air but pouring a bit of your soul onto paper. While the practice of writing didn’t make me perfect, it did make me better.
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