Words and What They Bring - Alicia Gaines

Sometimes, life throws you curveballs. 

Sometimes it’s many curveballs.

Sometimes these curveballs hit you, knock you off balance, but you can right yourself and maybe you can brush it off.

Sometimes these curveballs shake you to your very core and it’s all you can do to keep standing.

People deal with these curveballs in many different ways. 

Exercise, art, music, meditation, and talking have all been, at some point, described as therapeutic. They’re coping mechanisms that would leave us fallen and shattered without them. They are the glue to our curveball cracks, and many are things that we tend to be very passionate about.

Of course, there are many different methods of coping aside from the ones above. One of them, slightly less talked about but just as important is reading.

I love reading.

The smell of old paper, the crinkle of the pages, the complex people, and places, and emotions, and stories that are so vivid for being born of paper and ink.

There’s something so beautiful about the characters and their artificial lives that, for all they don’t exist, we cannot help but to love, to acknowledge, and to scorn.

There’s something more beautiful about the places, and oh the places you’ll go. You will see gardens like Eden, and barren deserts of sand, of sun; of gold. Oceans stronger, deadlier, but nonetheless beautiful, and forests—sometimes jungles—of vibrant green and the indescribably feeling of earth and nature. There are temples, cathedrals, cottages and cabins, villages and kingdoms you’ve never really seen. (But you have, and isn’t that amazing?)

There’s something about the emotions that good writing can evoke. Sorrow (tear-stained pages), anger (folds and tears), joy (brilliant smiles and laughter unreserved), anticipation (late nights sitting at the edge of your seat). 

I personally think that the strongest (or maybe it just lingers) will always be inspiration. Sometimes it’s a person or a place, or maybe it’s the story and the adventure, but sometimes they will write, you will read, and quite suddenly you will know not what you are, but what you could be. That realization will always feel like an energizer, like fire, or maybe a soothing balm.

That feeling remains the reason for my long-lasting love of literature. Sometimes I chase it after curveballs, but sometimes I chase after it when there is nothing ado at all.

Regardless, that feeling is one that I have and will continue to chase.