Here I am, unable to sleep once again. There's too many thoughts swirling through my head.

It is times like these when it is abundantly clear to me why books have always been my best friends

The pages become your world. You feel tense during the battles, happy when something works out, nostalgic during reunions. You grow close to the characters and feel truly emotionally invested in their hopes and fears

You can hate a character, and want to shake them and throw them off a cliff. You can get so scared by something in the book that you can't fall asleep that night because you think you see a myrddraal coming. You can be disgusted or upset by something that happens. But the thing is, you love it there.

Books have always been my escape. Through all of the drama and hardship I've been through, I've always just escaped to my books. Books are safe. A character can die or something else can happen that will leave you feeling hollow and empty inside, but you can start the book over and there they'll be, alive and happy again.

And the thing with book is.... Well, you may wonder at times how the ending will turn out. You may wonder how everything can possibly turn out alright--how the ending could possibly be good. But in the end, somewhere inside, you know that there'll be a happy ending. (I know, not all books have happy endings, and the feeling you get depends on how the ending was but.... They still leave you with that something. You feel a little more complete upon finishing.) Everything will turn out ok.

Happy endings aren't guaranteed in real life. I've freaked out about this in the past. It's when I've turned to God and my books. Then I can forget, for just a little while, what that girl said about me. I can forget that they're fighting again. I can forget that my best friend's boyfriend might be cheating on her. I can forget that he dumped me.

Now, I get along most of the time just fine. But it's nice to have that escape. Because once you open a book, the rest of the world disappears