As a young child I had an obsessive desire for stories and tales, which is not all that uncommon among children. Almost every night, if my sisters and I had been good, our father would read stories for us from one of the two children’s story books we had. We would all sit in the hallway outside of our rooms or by the fire when it was cold, the eerie orange glow adding to the theatrical baritone of my father’s voice. I loved being the one who got to hold the book and turn the pages, the glossy paper somehow thrilling to touch. I had read these stories hundreds of times, knew every illustration and every character. I knew the weight of those books, the way the strange, plastic-y leather covers would squeak when you ran a finger down it, the way the gold on the edges of the pages shone dully in the light. As my sisters and I learned to read and write, my father would let us act for a character in a story and our nightly readings turned into interactive plays, the carpet plush beneath our feet as we danced about, reciting our lines between fits of giggles.

I don’t remember actually learning to read and write I just know it was not hard and that it felt like I had been doing it all my life. I was thoroughly attached to books. I loved their distinct, almost dusty smell, the soft textured feel of their pages, but I loved the stories that they held the most. It took me almost no time to read a book and then I moved on to the next one in an even shorter amount of time. I became friends with the librarians at my elementary school and they had always let me check out the books that were above the average reading level for my age.

I was elated the first day they had let me check out a book that was meant for someone above my physical age, and was blind to what my peers thought. I had become bored with the droll, predictable stories in the kids’ books that were typical of my kid’s age in first grade; the pictures even seemed to bore me now that I had viewed them so often. I had finally been given the chance to read something that might challenge me, I was most certainly not giving this chance up. The book was one of the several books from The Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborne. I was hooked. I had read every single book from the series the library offered and each time I was equally excited to see where Jack and Annie would go next in their quests as the first time, and I especially loved solving the mysteries alongside them as I read.

However, as with any riveting series, I finished it all too quickly. Throughout the later books of my escapades with Jack and Annie, I had read other stories as well. It was around third grade when the next series that would consume my waking hours appeared. The series that whisked me through the rest of elementary school and helped make middle school bearable was the extensive Warriors written by a group of people all under the pseudonym, Erin Hunter. I was pulling all-nighters to read the elaborate series. My sisters and I had read these books at the same time, each of us equally obsessed with these fictional clans of cats and their battles, adventures and other hardships. We eventually read every book that was available to us, but I had made a lot of friends through this series who all in turn introduced me to more books. My mind was expanding and my imagination was running wild, all throughout the terrible trials of middle school that would only get worse. 
Despite my new found friends and my escapes through reading, my anxiety and depression were beginning to force their way out of the back of my mind and hit me at full force. I barely managed thanks to two things: music and reading. Whenever I felt sad or felt anxious because of one thing or another, I would put on some music and read. The varying melodies and tempos provided an almost perfect soundtrack to the movies that had played through my head, which followed the script on the bound pages. As helpful as this was for me to calm down during class, it was incredibly frustrating for some teachers who didn’t understand I was trying to cope and reading was therapeutic for me. I was constantly threatened with referrals or detention because of my lack of attention, my nose being stuck in a book or my mind still playing the remnants of its story in my head instead of working out some outrageous math problem. Their yelling only made my anxiety and depression worse and that only made me want to read more. But as school progressed, and books became a requirement to read, I began to hate the things that had helped me the most in my life.

It honestly hurts me to admit that at one point in my life, I barely touched a book that was not a school requirement. Being forced to identify the important symbols of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald or to summarize every three chapters of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee was a dread and made me hate them. Though I did enjoy most of the books I had read, I could not say that I had seen the movie playing in my head and listening to music no longer seemed to create a soundtrack. My love for reading is just one of the many things my anxiety and depression took from me. The joy to learn and the goal of becoming a famous musician were two others. The pain I felt during those couple of years without my books was torture, the uncontrollable crashing of my thoughts ringing through my head almost became unbearable. Through those years I did have my music but it just was not enough. I was missing something, and I had suffered.

Without my paper and ink escapes, my mind went stagnant, yet was way too loud at the same time. I enjoyed nothing, I had no hobbies, and I was becoming problematic both at home and at school. Over the course of the end of seventh grade all the way to the end of my sophomore year, I had lost many of the friends I had once had. It was as though I was unable to surface for air in a sea of self-hatred and uncontrollable depression that was constantly swirling and pulling me under. I felt as though I had lost everything I had loved so dearly, like a part of me had died. The high school library did not carry as many books as the elementary or middle school and it was not as exciting to browse through either. I could not seem to find anymore of Warriors and worst of all; my family gave our two beloved storybooks to a family friend with kids. I remember I had clung to those strange plasticky bound books, flipping through the well-fingered pages one last time, and I had almost cried. My friends were steadily ditching me one after the other and school became harder than it had ever been. I had no one, fictional or real, to help me cope.

Then, I read Wicked by Gregory Maguire and it was as though my life had started over. I became captivated by Maguire’s beautifully written spin-off from The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, and came to be greatly attached to the main character, Elphaba Thropp. I also began to read the series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin and found another escape through the brilliantly written world of alliances and betrayals he had created. I even found out that Erin Hunter was still writing books for my beloved series, as well as several spinoffs. My mind was racing with the familiar smell of books again, turning the pages felt natural and the movies in my mind I had so dearly loved were back.

I know I can never be as happy as I once was as a young child, but I’m better because I’m reading again. I’ve read several more books this year, finishing each one at my old pace and loving every word. That thrashing sea of despair I had come to know every foaming wave of ebbed to a manageable swaying with the help of my books, their therapeutic plots bringing me some degree of peace again.