I was not one accustomed to heart break. I wasn’t one who usually looked for trouble either. And yet I found myself picking up the book, despite the many warnings from friends. Not close friends but friends all the same.

It looked like a normal book to me. A bright cover with the title placed in big font in the middle. The smell of paper and ink, thick and new, like a breeze that carried promises of faraway lands; battles for you to watch from a distance, a bystander to organized chaos; and characters you would come to love and know, but at the same time not know.

So I picked it up and brought it home.

I brought it to my room with my bookshelves on which sat hundreds of other battles, and characters I knew yet didn’t. Tiny infinites in pretty covers with pictures, like a present waiting for me to tear off the wrapping. Then I cracked open my new book and once again I was just a bystander; powerless to do anything but watch it play out.

How helpless one feels in knowing they can do nothing. The pain of shutting a book and not wanting to go further, yet knowing you will never forgive yourself if you just stop now. Almost as if you would be betraying the characters themselves by not reading further. If they could handle this why not you? And how dare you abandon your characters just when they needed you most. Yet, like most people, I would shut the book, hold my breath, count to ten, then open it again and silently apologize for trying to leave in the first place.