To my childhood:

What I adored the most about you were the storybooks. The simple things like reading little tales to little kids before they go to sleep is a tradition that gives all of us the initial motivation to aspire to achieve great things. At least that is what you did for me, anyway. I can still remember Clifford, the Big Red Dog and Treasure Island were always toppling over on my shelf. I remember the weekly trips to the kids’ section of the town library. I remember squishing into the corner behind the bookshelves in Woodside Elementary School to settle down on the carpeted floor and eagerly listen to Mrs. Scholin read us another story. Somehow, those days are gone now, and I can’t help but contemplate how I let you go.

I think it all began when the high school chapter of my life commenced. My imaginative delight was suddenly replaced with intellectual stimulation. Storybooks were replaced with textbooks. I soon became aware that your therapeutic power of fantasy was dying within me. It was not a sudden demise that sent my soul straight to the fiery pits of all hell and doom, but rather a death that gradually, leisurely concealed the secret that allowed me to invent make-believe in my life. High school has sincerely turned me into a realist. Whimsical thoughts have essentially become irrelevant, and I guess that you were just collateral damage. I have heard the words “this is what you have to do to prepare for the real world” too many times for things to have turned out differently between us. At some point or another, I suppose that I recognized that this “real world” does not often resemble what your storybooks told me the world could be. I thought that this world was too dull to let people go on living within their glorious imaginations for their entire lives. It just seemed like becoming a proper adult meant leaving you behind. I want you to know that I found this all very sad, and I could relate then more than ever to Peter Pan’s desire to “never grow up.” I couldn’t help but feel as though my old friends Dorothy, Wendy, Cinderella were taken from me too soon.

What I am realizing as I near the culmination of my high school career, though, is that these beautiful stories did their job when the time was right. They molded my early sense of self. They were the tiny seeds that somehow blossomed into my current aspirations. I once planned to take the world by storm and fight for justice and passion like Hercules and every other hero that I once read about, and today I find myself leading the Human Rights League at school. Some may call this a coincidence, but I don’t think I would. Not only that, but I find that because my affection for reading started when you were still around, it is a much more pleasurable experience to tackle long reads. When my English class read Great Expectations, I remember being one of the only students in the class to thoroughly enjoy the book, or to even finish the book for that matter. I suppose that this was because I was fond of Pip’s Horatio Alger Myth, which resembled so many tales that I had read with you years earlier.

You may be fading away, but I will always have a piece of you with me. In the long run, I know now that the paperback pals that you sent my way gave me the foundation to become a young adult who still dreams for a better tomorrow. I just wanted to thank you for that.

-------The Girl Who Grew Up