What is comfort? How does an eight-year-old find comfort? When the only thing she saw were doctors trying to figure out what she had. When she didn’t understand what was going on around her. All she wanted was to be normal. How does one find comfort?
Growing up, I knew I was very different from my peers. I was always around older people as I was growing up, since I was in and out of the hospital. I learned a lot from everyone around me. It wasn’t until I was left alone that I realized how sad I would be, I had no one to talk to, I had nothing to do. People were my comfort. But what happened when I was alone? When all these thoughts were in my head? What else can be my comfort? I started off with the basics, TV. I started watching The Sandlot on repeat when I was hospitalized. I really thought I had found my comfort. My comfort just lasted an hour and forty-two minutes. Then I was back to square one.
Then I tried music. It would work half of the time. But MP3 players didn’t have a lot of battery. I don’t remember how it started. How I found my comfort. Reading. I started reading more and more. As I waited to be called into the doctor’s office, in my hospital bed when I was admitted, and as I sat in a chair for three hours on dialysis. At the time, I would read about mysteries. It was my favorite. But one day, as I was walking through an aisle in a bookstore, I came across a book that changed my life. As I was not a fan of fantasy or paranormal fiction, I was very hesitant. But something about that book stood out. I took it home and it was the best decision I had made. I reread that book about five times before my brother decided to buy me the second book. Then the third. After he saw how much I enjoyed it, he told me to find another series on that author.
Josephine Angelini. The first author I felt transported me to a different place for a couple of hours. The way she wrote, it was my comfort. The first book I read was Starcrossed, and it was a different type of book from what I was used to. But nevertheless, it became my favorite. After I read her series, I had to read more of her. That’s when I read Trial of Fire. They were both good series, but I felt more identified with Lily Proctor. The way she was sick all the time and the doctors didn’t know what to do or how to treat her. The way she was just sick of being sick and leaving her world to go to another. How in that world she was not sick, but there was something wrong in that world too. It showed me that not everything is perfect, but what made it perfect was the people around you.
So, I found out eventually that reading was my comfort. But I always wondered one thing. An author’s comfort is writing, but how do they write a book? What’s the process? Do they know that we read their books, and we find some sort of comfort in their writing? Whatever it is, I’m glad I found mine, to at least get me through the tough days. Reading is my comfort; I should have known since I was eight.
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