The classic steel military trunks have been the one constant companion in my many moves from city to city. In the era of landlines, distance was permanent; once you moved from a place, friends became faces, then echoes, and finally, blurs. So I always found myself starting over from scratch with no strings attached. I would mourn my friends for a few days then eventually start forgetting about them – out of mind and out of sight. A new city meant starting over, new stories building from the dust of departure.
Anyone who underestimates finding your footing in the disarray of a school bus and reminisces about childhood with rose-tinted glasses is a fool. For the burgeoning politics of middle-school is one of the most intimidating arenas a child may face, especially if they are a newcomer, fresh meat tossed to the daunting wolf that was social hierarchy. The backseats of the bus were ruled by high-schoolers, obviously, making jokes that fell out of the vocabulary and grasp of a 6th grader like myself. The front, with younger children shrieking at 6 am, laughter too loud for the hour, their energy bursting out, unstoppable even by the burden of their massive school bags, half their size, adorned with their favourite graphic cartoons. The middle of the bus had its own ecosystem – cliques, a trio of girls who did not seem to want more friends, a duo of siblings dozing off with their mouths open, a couple of other kids discussing events from their class the previous day. My eyes rapidly scanned for empty seats while my heart thudded like a small trapped bird on a balcony, paranoid that everyone was sizing me up.
As I found a seat, every inch of my face felt as though it was being stung by piercing gazes, my thoughts spanned from please let this not be someone’s designated seat to when will this day be over. It could not be far from over. At school, the air of indifference was thick, my classmates were not particularly warm or welcoming and no one spoke to me the entire day. I could not wait to go home but then as I was bent over my school diary copying the timetable from the last page of my newly-assigned bench partner’s school diary, I noticed a period declaring DEAR time. When time came for DEAR time, I found that it was an acronym – Drop Everything And Read. This school had a designated time for reading…books?…which were not part of the curriculum? The idea of a school having sacred time for reading storybooks, not textbooks, was my first ray of sunshine on this overcast day. The assigned DEAR-time book that year was Little Women by Louisa M. Alcott. Now, I am not sure if it was my love for stories instilled through a ritual of narration at bedtime by my father or the longing to escape into a world away from whatever this disaster of a first day was that turned this book to becoming my most trusted companion for the following weeks.
When after dinner, my mother would come to turn the lights off in my room, I would beg her to let me read for ten minutes more. Being an English teacher and a lover of books, she always obliged. And so it began: books became my most trusted friends. On nights when sleep wouldn’t come I would be led to dreamland by the novel I was reading. During lunch hours when the classroom became loud and chaotic, books muffled the noise. I was not just reading Perks of Being a Wallflower, I was one.
Of course, I broke out of my shell eventually, learning the delicate choreography of the school’s social circle, and made space for myself, all while reading How to Be Popular by Meg Cabot which ironically had no tips for becoming popular whatsoever. All this to say, while I was no introvert by any measure, reading gave me refuge from loneliness and anxiety; a sort of solitude.
Then came crushes, as brief as recess, might I add. While a few brave people in 7th grade began dating, I was too timid for such grand risks. That’s when the universal right-of-passage (for my generation) of being enamoured by vampire fantasy novels came through: the Twilight Saga phase. Young people often find their way to young adult fantasy characters as a buffer to their sexuality. Sexuality arrives not as desire, but a yearning for tenderness, a longing to be seen, a search for the fantastical.
That’s what books do, they open up the world to new possibilities, let you live a life bigger than your own. I think, now that I am a little older I understand love more but somewhere the way the poets have described it, a look that lingers, a pause that lasts a breath too long, still remains in my ever-yearning romantic heart. And to bond over books with someone, to speak in the shared language of stories, that still remains my top marker of a friendship that will last.
Books have not only been my friends but have also helped me connect with people and forge friendships. In college, while reading The Mother by Maxim Gorky, a person spotted the book cover and asked me to join their reading circle. I found a community that helped me understand writing which I was otherwise not bound to drift towards – I read political theory, feminist texts and the pulse of global struggles. My worldview, I now know, is shaped as much by books as by interactions with people, if not more.
Beyond introducing me to people, books also led me to the pen. In the company of authors like Jhumpa Lahiri, Anaïs Nin, Alice Munroe and Annie Ernaux I began writing to make sense of the thoughts they spurred. A dear friend once told me, “You should write more, it acts as a clarifier of thought.” So I did. I found myself obsessed – noticing patterns, learning from the greats without ever taking a formal class. And they lit the path like constellations. I read them still over and over again, studying their sentences as one studies a beloved’s face. I find myself tracing their cadence on long afternoons while the house sleeps and the silence overflows, their voices thread through it.
What is friendship if it is not a refuge from loneliness, a hand that steadies, a counsel to provide words of advice? Even when I have abandoned reading, books have waited patiently and somehow the right books have found me at times I needed them. Sometimes I find myself crying about my short attention span, my fickle-mindedness or how I have been hoarding more books than I have been reading, but life is a work in progress, a story mid-sentence. And to take me to the other side, I have my friends, of both flesh and paper, to make sense of it
Cover image by Ed Robertson on Unsplash
