Lost & Found In Story

I am a lover of words. A keeper of stories. I believe we all have at least one to tell.

I sometimes wish I could live inside the stories of others, inhale their words & slip away, far from me & this landscape I often feel swallowed up in.

I’ve been lonely for much of my life, although not alone. At one point when I was nearly as alone as I was lonely, I found myself saying that it is okay to not have many friends; I have my best friend, and when that is not enough, I have Jane Austen and her stories.

See I am not a great or terribly well-read reader, but I know that books and stories are faithful friends and that you can, “put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back” (John Green). When you become both lonely and alone you learn that the words whispered onto the pages of books can be your life-line, not just to another world but even to your own.

When the walls are unscalable. When I am down to just one last string. When I need something to hold on to; something not human that will not so easily decay; I need something to hold the innermost parts of me together with the rest of the world – I know then that I need the secrets, loves, pains, joys and adventures of others. I need the “something” that exists in stories.