Zeebooks

I wanted to take a second to write about my love for books and how this love started from a young age.  So here goes, Enjoy:

My first memories of books are the box car children, When I was about two years old my mother started reading me a chapter or two every night. Thinking back I'm surprised my toddler self would actually enjoy a book without pictures, but it being one of the first books I was ever introduced to, I don't think I knew that it was "missing" anything. Since then I have always loved books. I remember walking to the local library with my mom and getting a backpack full of books every single week.  I remember always having the highest number in the summer reading programs I participated in once I could actually read.

But books were more then just a past time for me, in some ways, they were a means of survival. Some of you might know what it's like to grow up in an unsafe environment like I did, and by unsafe, I mean alcoholic father and all that comes with that. Books started to become a way I could escape into my own world, or rather the world of the story. It was a way to live a happier life, it was a break from what was happening around me. 
There is a quote from the book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close that explains in perfectly: 

 " I started inventing things, and then I couldn't stop, like beavers, which I know about. People think they cut down trees so they can build dams, but in reality its because their teeth never stop growing, and if they didn't constantly file them down by cutting through all of those trees, their teeth would start to grow into their own faces, which would kill them. That's how my brain ways"

This was reading for me, I read just as much out a necessity as I did out of pleasure.  I started inventing things as well. When I learned to write, I wrote my own stories when I didn't have any to read. I invented the story I wished were my own. Where I was the hero and not a little girl stuck in a bad situation. But rather I was reading of stories that others invented out creating my own the effect was the same. I started reading and couldn't stop because if I did the reality of where I was in life, the things that were happening around me and to me would have been too much. I wouldn't have been able to survive. So instead I read and I wrote. 

To this day, books still are my go to when things are really bad. They still help me cope with life, they still give me a way to escape, but of course they have also become so much more than just a coping mechanism for me; but I'll save that for another post.