Words Can Save You

“She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.”

-Anne Dillard

I could begin this post by telling you how my mom read to me as a child, or my favorite books that I remember best from the early-dawn years of my life. Instead, I will tell you that there’s no one certain date I can pinpoint as the day I said yes, today I am a reader. It isn’t that simple.

Books are unlimited potential. At any given point, you can pick up a new title and know it could be the best thing you’ve ever read. It could be the tiny seed to a different way of thinking, a more open way to live. It could break your heart and burn you down to ash before allowing you to rise up, new. It could make you laugh, or it could be something quick to make an hour pass as you sunbathe on vacation.

Books can save your life. They’ve been there for me, the worlds inside, waiting when some of the worst days of my life happened. They’ve held memories for me, bittersweet or happy, from places I was in and people I loved at the time I read them.

I can safely gauge how well my life is going by how voraciously I work through my bookcases. I’ve read ten books in a month, but there was also one blurred, terrible year where my only two read were, inexplicably, Where’d You Go, Bernadette? and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

And how beautiful is it to see readers gather to discuss, with sincere pleasure, their favorite books? I am an anxious person, yet I can confidently talk about books with absolutely everyone.

Books make me braver. They have made me better.

It’s because of them that I know the best compliment I can receive is not, “You’re beautiful.”, but rather, “Because of your passion for books, you have made me fall in love with reading again.”

Books have woven themselves, their pages and ink and binding, into my blood, my bones, my heart. My life has become an ode to them.

I could say I’m a reader, but, as I’m sure my fellow book lovers would agree, we are so, so much more than that.

We are the keepers of stories. We are monuments to the power of words.

– Sara Myriad