What Doesn't Kill Me Stays in Pages

They say a reader lives a thousand lives, and people who don't read only live once. At first, I couldn't comprehend what it meant. How can a person live thousands of lives by sitting for hours staring at a piece of paper?

... a book.

But then my life changed when I got to hold one. The letters slowly felt like flying, slowly building worlds in my head. The pages turned into wild waves blasting me to different shores. It is all I need to experience things that seem so impossible in this lifetime. I could lay down all day and get to experience the different seasons.

10 pages, and I get to go from cities to countries to slowly traveling the world.
1 book, and I get to learn things some people need a whole lifetime to even know.

Little by little, the wood rack in my room was filled with thick books I finished reading within just hours. The sun doesn't cast its light on me anymore. I forgot how many weeks it has been since I touched grass. With my eyes buried between my books, I forgot that life outside doesn't stop, it doesn't wait, especially for me.

But what if the things that give you too much later on take away much more... and worse, you?