The Feelings of a Bookholic

Bibliophiles

Bibliophile- (noun) a person who collects or has great love for books.

Or in common slang, what people call me- nerd.

Books have always been my sweet escape, a backdoor to sneak out of reality. A hope that in this monochrome world, at some point of time in their life, somewhere, someone was drenched in the colours of emotions, I am adorned with right now.

The scent of fresh crisp inked pages mixed with petrichor and aroma of hot coffee, makes my heart beat a little faster. The feeling of book spines under my fingertips, send tingles of electricity down my spine. Those moments that force me to involuntarily hold my breath, make my toes curl in anticipation. The times when I feel proud of protagonist's achievement, I squeal out of joy. Those tears that involuntarily sneak out and magnify a few words of a heart breaking paragraph, inflict a sweet ache in my heart. That addictive drive to discover more, keeps me up all night.

Aren't all these signs of love? Well if they are, then I am hopelessly romanticising the emotions these 'lifeless' pages hold.

Mythologies say that every soul is born 7 times, scientists on the other hand deny it but you know what I believe in? What I have experienced?

You can live as many lives, characters and situations you want. All you have to do is read.

Not the normal kind of reading but the kind where you can feel the emotions that the words behold. The kind where you gasp during plot twists and sigh dreamily during romantic kisses. The kind that drives you to cuss during evil's triumph and sends you into adrenaline rush during cliff hangers. The kind where you lose the sense of time and surrounding. The kind where you suddenly imagine yourself in shoes of protagonist and analyse his choices. The kind where along the course, you start giving faces and appearances to characters. Where you become so familiar of their quirks and flaws that you start seeing them as reality. Where the last few words of epilogue make you feel the end of your existence.

Because that is the end. End of your existence as protagonist.

But didn't we learn that energy can neither be created nor be destroyed and can only be transferred from one source to another? I believe it's indeed true. Because likewise, you can't create someone and then stop living them. Just like the birth of moon through collision of ill fated- Theia and still hypothetical meteoroid, a character is also born from collision of ill-fated encounters and sprinkle of imagination. It is born from the writer and it becomes a part of reader, impossible to be destroyed.

So how is reading not a chance to live someone else's life?

The way how, in each novel protagonist voyages through both pleasant and stormy sea but somehow makes it alive to the shore with much more strength and experience, makes me wonder if the author intended it as a metaphor to reality. Reality where the almighty is the writer and I am the protagonist, sailing in the stormy sea with only my faith acting as a torch.

Isn't the thought motivating?

Books are where all my dreams turn into reality, where my imagination soars and I live moments that I craved or dreaded. It's a place where I can be billionaire while having only a few coins in my torn pockets. The alternate universe of novels, is devoid of judgement that this world throws at you.

And then, people call people like me awkward, socially impaired and bookworm, but who cares?

It is easier to fall for a fictional character than to have my heart broken by a real one, anyway.

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