At first school forced me to search when I read, for meaning, similes, imagery, them. But I soon broke that habit. I found my outlet; I trained myself to really read. Afterword, books captured me. They took me places, places I always wanted to see, I no longer simply searched for the parts of a book; no, I picked up a sword and joined the fight. I became the characters’ best friend. This was my world. Then, my world was shattered, and when I put it back together, it spanned a whole new plane.

When I saw the glass break, I was terrified. To where could I escape when my escape route was destroyed? In the end, cooler head prevailed; I realized that I had been the one to throw the rock. I began to write, that was my stone, and I had a sniper’s accuracy. I reconstructed this broken world with my own intentions. I made representations of everyone: friends, mentors, family; I breathed life into new people, I constructed worlds, I erected castles, I founded nations, I caused conflict to erupt, and I signed the peace treaty. But the most enticing part was making a new me. I made myself perfect; my only flaw was given to the character to make him seem more real (don’t worry I fixed that). Now I was in control, and if you know me, that’s not a good thing.

My escape was surreal, and it didn’t satisfy. I need more. I did the reasonable thing; I went to a writing group. If my writing doesn’t make me happy, then I should become a better writer, right. Wrong, that only made it worse I still had no escape but now my non-escape was so inviting. Then I was told something, “Don’t read as a reader. You need to start reading as a writer.” When I took up that style of reading, I once again enjoyed reading. There was one trade-off though. No book, no paragraph, no sentence was safe. I began to tear apart the works of my favorite authors, reducing them to nothing. I wanted to simply read again, just to read. I did enjoy reading as a writer; I saw wonderful things and understood why the pros did what they did. But the “I see what you did there”s could not take the place of fighting with the great heroes of Albion, nor weaving spell with legendary wizards. And I began to wonder; could I sew my own tales and live another’s?

At last, I was set free by the conclusion of my favorite series. When the man who inspired me to break the glass, my favorite author, Bryan Davis, concluded his Dragons in Our Midst, I remembered how to read. As those last words of Tears of a Dragon resounded in my thoughts, my mind went quiet. It was an exhilarating new experience; it was an once-in-a-lifetime experience. Never again would my mouth and brain stop running at the same time. The moment was bittersweet. The epic had ended, and the characters who had become my companions and friends were now gone. I was compelled to go back and read aloud, and as the last line slipped through my lips, “It didn’t matter, it just didn’t matter,” my inner reader and inner writer settled accounts. I cried in my despair, in my joy at the novel’s end and at the simplicity of that perfect ending. I sat there in tears for several minutes knowing that there was nothing there to analyze.