Waking up, book. Coffee and breakfast, going back to bed, book. A shower, refilling the water canteen, bed, book. A nap, book. Do I exercise today? Hmm, maybe tomorrow. Book.

Book until my eyes water, until the words get blurred, until the story I’m reading melts in deep sleep and in my dreams. Book in the wee hours. Book until the light in the window transforms from soft blue to bright white, to intense yellow and a warm orange, and then to pastel shades of purple, inky blue and the nighttime black. Light from the lamp, book.

I can’t explain it. It was like I was in this magical land that sprung up out of repressed need. An island in the middle of nowhere, unchartered, invisible in the map—not meaning to be found—yet I found it. It showed itself to me. God, it was bliss. Pure and utter bliss. I intended for the few days to be a vacation, but the overwhelming satisfaction had left me dazed. Why did I feel this way?

Why do we read? To be informed, entertained, to get inspired, to feel understood, to relate, to be someone else for a while, to get lost in a place so disparate from the ground we walk.

I know myself well enough, that I was in it, because I was hiding. I needed to hide. I needed to not exist for a time. Hiding behind books, letting myself dissolve in the stories, because there are changes out there that I wasn’t ready to face, tasks I’ve been putting off because I wasn’t in the right mindset to do them.

It was an oasis, a retreat, a place of refuge. A temporary place for one to rest and recover, until it’s time to set sail again, on to the known world.

I didn’t want to go, but I had to. Like every other holiday, like every thing on this earth, it starts then it ends.