Bindings

       Serenity. A beautifully calm word. It's the ocean splashing playfully against the sand. It's the warmth of the sun kissing your skin. It's the wind whispering secrets in your ear. It's the sound and colors of the world around you, beckoning you to make something of it. It's my happy place. A place where I feel most like myself. A place where I can let go of all my inhibitions and breathe out negativities and carbon dioxide. A place where I am the reader of a fantastically curious book and everything around me is a reflection of my decision to turn the page or stop to take in the worlds depicted before me.
       I could lay on the sand for hours. Laying on my Harry Potter themed towel, turning the pages of an old book. Giving myself over to the adventures and secrets of every yellowed page, undisturbed by the outside world. Letting the dark stories of Poe engulf me in his compelling words of mystery, or soundlessly quoting Shakspeare's many tragedies on my lips as I share the agony of the characters' sorrows. Whether it be by Dickens, Brontë, or Chandler, I could give my soul over to many wonders and worlds that await me. 
       It's my escape from the outside world's many teenage dramas, heartbreaks, breakouts, insecurities, and raging hormones. I like being able to experience true, faithful love without risking anything of my own except perhaps a paper cut every seven-hundred pages. I like being able to get emotionally attached to my fictional characters mainly, because they can't hurt or judge me. Yet, they become very real to me. They become my friends that comfort me when Starbucks and Ben&Jerry's can't. I'm the kind of girl that would be up at three o'clock in the morning bawling my eyes out, mourning the loss of a favorite character rather than the loss of a inconsistent, thick-headed boy. Instead of drooling over the latest shirtless pictures of Channing Tatumn, I fanticize falling in love with Mr. Darcy, Jay Gatsby, and Jace Wayland. Even in the unlikely event that they turn heel I can always close the book and come back to it later; this rarely happens because I hardly ever put a piece of literature down once I pick it up.