Breathless

"When your escape is a book, when all you’re doing is reading, no one has any reason to worry, any reason to suspect. And a book is better than sleep sometimes anyway. There’s no risk of nightmarish dreams of the past, of unwanted memories springing up. You become someone else; take their life as your own. Your problems disappear, because they are no longer your problems. But the thing is, with every mask you take on, with every story you slip into? You lose a little bit of yourself. And there’s no one to stop you, because there’s nothing wrong with reading,” my voice took on a slightly mocking edge, “The quiet girl in the back of the library, nose deep in the thick, musty pages, she’s smart, responsible, curious, and academic. There is no reason to interrupt her and every reason to leave her alone. And that’s what people do; they pass her by, and she’s buried her hurt so deeply that she barely feels the blow of it anymore. And she just keeps reading. Stripping herself clean until the skeleton of her soul is all that remains and even that is becoming fractured. And she just can’t breath, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but leaving herself, because she can’t breath and when she reads, when she’s that other person, she can breath, because she’s not me anymore-” I was sobbing by then, uncontrollable cries wracking my body, merciless. And I couldn’t look up at him, couldn’t face the horror and disgust that I knew would cover his face. All I could think was, they’re going to leave now. And it hurt. It dug past everything, that one thought, and somehow reached my ripped and broken heart. And I can feel my soul begin tear.
And it hurts.