welcome to my mind

She always looks so lost. It's as if she's constantly looking for something that just... isn't there. It is strange though, it’s only when her nose is shoved into a book does she look content with herself. She has an uncanny ability of making it seem as if she has her own little bubble, like she’s manifested her own little world.

Another thing I’ve noticed about her, she never reads the same book twice. Yes, I have been keeping track. Not only that, one day I asked her why she reads so much, and she told me she was a time traveler. It took a lot of power to not laugh, but I was curious, so I asked her what made her a time traveler. You won’t believe what she did next. She carefully stuck her book mark between the pages she was currently on, and flipped all the way to one of the first few pages, then pointed a small finger at one specific line.

The book was published in 1997. Obviously this made no sense to me whatsoever, but this time I didn’t have to ask. She told me that books were the windows to the era, a time traveling machine for time travelers such as herself.

She said that with such an air of sincerity, that I almost believed her. Almost. So I took a seat next to her and began to question her, it was my first time conversing with a time traveler, so of course I had to take advantage of the moment. 

She’s traveled as far back as the 1400′s, where she witnessed the reign of King Arthur, to the 1800′s, where she saw the great extent of injustice on human kind. She claims that she doesn’t travel to change the past, only to observe and learn from it.

I ask her if she’s ever traveled to the future. She shakes her head in refusal, apparently her time machine isn’t advance enough to go there yet. She doesn’t mind though, she’s very content with the options she has. I then ask her how often she time travels. As often as she can, is her answer.

She goes through a solid three books a week, I tried talking to her again but she claims that she’s too busy time traveling to hold conversation for too long.

One day in class she is scolded for reading, rather than paying attention to the lecture, and has her book confiscated. There it was again! That lost expression she constantly wears whenever I catch her without a book. She fidgets heavily with her hands and her eyes scour the classroom, like they’re looking for something, anything, to distract them.

It’s rather strange how lost the time traveler looked. She seemed far more comfortable being stuck in the fifteenth century then she did in that moment. I never thought a time traveler could look so lost in their own era, but there’s a first time for everything I guess.

Stuck in a moment where life moves too fast, yet too slow at the same time

I yearn to mature

To this day, many people question why I enjoy the art of filling blank spaces with a mixture of letters. The truth is, I don’t know why myself. When I was younger I tried to like subjects such as math and science because I thought it was cool, and no one ever considered english to be a cool subject. So for countless years I endured the hardships of numbers and equations, and there was a point in time where I genuinely believed I could do this for the rest of my life. Then I met a life changing individual in seventh grade who made me love and cherish a subject in the span of a month, more on this person another time. I’ve been put on the spot a countless amount of times for favoring a field that is heavily looked down upon by many people. All of you STEM majors are incredible, and you could all totally kick my ass if we had a contest on who could differentiate equations the fastest, but I feel that many overlook the talents that those in the liberal arts field possess. It’s one thing to be able to program robots and balance chemical equations, but it’s another to be able to paint images and create movies in another’s mind through the use of only 26 characters. I choose to write because I like the unpredictability of writing. When I do a math problem there’s a certain sense of security I possess as I know that there can only be one answer to (most) problems (let’s disregard answers that could be irrational numbers or even infinite). In my eyes, there is no limit to writing, the only limit a reader or a writer has is the one they place onto themselves. I like the fluidity of writing, and the ever present feeling of uncertainty one may possess when writing and reading. I like the slight feelings of adrenaline I experience when I hit a cliffhanger in a story. I like the feelings of satisfaction I feel as I watch a blank space fill with letters and my word count increase. I like the intimacy a writer often displays in their work, and I like seeing how words can bring out sides that are unbeknownst to yourself. I like writing for an endless amount of reasons, and because of that, this is why I will choose to write, every single time. 

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