There was a time when a little girl realised that the world can be louder than she knew how to be.
Conversations felt tiring,expectations weighed her down, feelings arrived too fast, too intense, too untamed. She did not read because she was intellectual, just a tad bit too overwhelmed. Days when her emotions felt too big to be contained against her ribs, so she gave them light in hallways which were quieter.
Books – in books pain had structure,conflict had resolution, even grief was overshadowed. Even in chaos, everything had a direction, a purpose. And that lassie clung to that – the idea of suffering making narrative sense. That was the first pair of wings, opening a book. Books did not demand anything from her. They never asked her to be smaller to fit their margins, steadier to match their pace, or easier to understand. Between the inked pages, she could dive into a different galaxy. She traded her confusion for someone else's narrative, borrowed the heroine's heartbreak to ease her own, fly through a city which was not hers, and even feel things safely. She wasn't escaping reality, merely pausing it as the world outside continued –
honks blared, stray dogs barked, life went on – but it was only her and her imagination that flew high within those chapters.
Writing came just as slowly as reading, like little scribbles along her favourite book or excelling in essays given as homework – it became the second pair of wings. The emotions took the face of sentences instead of storms, like anger that would have startled the folks and longing that felt almost too embarrassing. Questions which had no clear answers, pain became raw and sincere, and the girl turned braver on paper –more articulate, honest in ways more than she was in-person.
One who hesitated in life, confessed on paper. The mess acquired rhythm and fascination flowed from her fountain pen.
Sometimes she wondered if she hid in stories because she couldn't trust reality to hold her gently. Books never judged her sensitivity, journals never told her she was too much. There were nights where she wrote until her wrists hurt, only to rid the noise out of her head. They did not erase what hurt, they did not solve the complexities of human relationships, or the loneliness which sometimes crept in quietly. But they gave her distance – and sometimes that is enough to breathe. When leaving felt easier, the detaching from the earth felt safer – she left through pages instead. Escaped to empires where yearning was romantic and endings made sense, well at least sometimes.
Maybe one day,she would not need to escape the same way.
Maybe one day stories will be just stories.
But for now they are bridges, between the storm and the stillness, between the breaking and the breathing.
And maybe that is what art does – it offers a warm temporary shelter, a place to rest our mind, a mirror that reflects us back in softer light, an escapism.
The girl is almost an adult now, still returning to those doorways when the universe feels too scathing.
And for a while, that is enough, she is enough – I am enough.
