Running Away

Everybody needs it some form or another, I think. Some people cut. Some people kill themselves. Me, I read. I RP. I do anything that lets me be someone else, for even a brief period of time. Some people would say that's weird and horrible and sick or whatever, but I would counter that it's better than physically harming myself. Or taking my life. I can't deal with my problems sometimes. Everybody probably feels that way at some point in their lives. We all express it in different ways. Because all of us are different. I'm unique, so I have a unique way of dealing with it.

I always loved reading going up. When I was little, it was how I bonded with my mom before she died. When she got sick it became a way to stay close to her. We even made up our own stories sometimes, when we got bored with our books. After she died...it became a way to escape my problems. My emotional pain, my depression. A way to just get away from everything-the tears, the pitying looks, the offered words of comfort that had no real meaning to me.

I couldn't deal with it. It was too fresh-too painful. I remembered how much I loved reading, how close Mom and I always were when we read together. I threw myself into the books with such an intensity it was like I became the character I was reading. I experienced things along with them, and for brief, blessed periods, I didn't have to deal with any pains. And if the problems between the covers ever became too much, I could simply close it until I was strong enough to deal, then continue exactly where I was. It seemed so much better than my life did. Enduring, never having the option of closing a cover, always having to deal with the pain... and knowing, deep down, that even when I escape the pain will be waiting to take me when I have to come back.

But for me, the brief hours of dealing with someone else's problems was a true blessing, a gift from God I wasn't sure I deserved. But I took it anyway, because the alternative-living in reality 24/7-was too terrible to consider.

Maybe to you that makes me a freak. A weirdo. Maybe in your eyes it's wrong. But it's me, and I love my escape. I probably wouldn't be alive without it.