Books are dear friends

 Books are my treasured friends, my dearest companions. They have walked beside me in the loneliest hours, whispered to me when no one else was listening, and taught me how to breathe when the world felt too sharp. I learned early that between the pages of a book was a kind of magic, a place I could disappear into and be held. I didn’t need to explain myself to a book. I didn’t need to be beautiful or strong or put together. I could come undone on page 73 and find myself again by the final chapter.

They never asked me to be anyone other than who I was. Whether I was too loud or too quiet, too wild or too tender, books didn’t mind. They took me in. Gave me shelter. Gave me names for things I didn’t yet understand. Sometimes they gave me language for the ache in my chest. Sometimes they simply made me laugh when I forgot how.

I remember being a child with too many feelings and not enough space to speak them. I would hide in corners, on rooftops, under tables, anywhere quiet, just to read. I was always reading. Pages full of faraway lands, forgotten gods, wild women, broken hearts, impossible dreams. I would get lost in those stories and come back changed. I would read the same paragraph over and over, just to feel the way the words sat in my mind.

I remember sneaking books under my blanket at night, reading by the faint glow of a flashlight, aching to know how the story would end. I would hold the words like secrets, folding them into the deepest parts of myself. There was power in knowing I could always return to them. That even if the world outside was breaking, there would always be this, these stories, these truths, these other lives I could step into.

Some books cracked me open. Others stitched me back together. Some made me feel less alone in my pain, as if the author had reached across time and space to say, I see you. I know. Me too. That connection is sacred. There’s something holy about being known without ever having met. That’s what a good book does, I it makes you feel known. Not in a loud or dramatic way, but quietly, like a warm hand resting on your back.

And then there were books that didn’t teach or comfort but changed me entirely. Made me question everything I thought I knew. Made me feel the weight and beauty of being human. I would finish the last page and sit there, stunned, as if something had shifted inside me. As if I had been initiated into a truth I could never unsee.

Books have been my solitude, my sanctuary. In their company, I have wept, laughed, questioned and grown. They have seen me through heartbreak, through wonder, through transformation. They’ve challenged my beliefs, soothed my nerves, and sparked my imagination when the world felt flat and gray.

Even now, I turn to them when I need to remember who I am. When life feels too fast or too loud, I slow down with a book. They are the friends who never left. The ones I carry from home to home, shelf to shelf, always within reach. My sacred company. My soul’s archive. My truest refuge.

~Shanti Freedom Das