I find books refreshing.
Chapter One.
You meet your protagonist. Sometimes you meet them in their worst state–directly after a tragedy. You meet a shell of a person. Pathetic. Probably not doing much. Wondering if they can carry on. But you know they will.
You read Chapter One and you know there’s going to be more. Many more. Sometimes hundreds of chapters.
And you know that by the last chapter, your character will be whole again. Or on their way.
You don’t know what’s about to happen within these pages, I mean sometimes you have an idea, but you don’t know for sure. And, of course, even your best guesses can sometimes be horribly wrong. There are such things as plot twists, you know.
And sometimes, many times, I find, the book turns out to be a better story than you could’ve hoped for. The characters your protagonist meets are surprising. They’re loving and supportive. They deal with their own troubles too, of course, yet they’re still so good.
Then there’s all of these crazy events that happen. Weird plot lines and crazy stories and remarkable adventures, all covered on these next pages.
But then it ends. If you think as I do–and I encourage you to make the jump with me–these characters lives’ don’t end. There are epilogues, some never told. The characters don’t just die at the end of their novel. At least not always. Not all of them.
I like to believe that they live on, sometimes ordinarily. Maybe something not quite sequel-worthy, but they live on.
But the story is so important. Everything that starts with Chapter One and ends on Chapter Who’s-Keeping-Count-Anymore is important. The characters develop. The problem is solved. The world is right again.
I don’t know that my story has started yet, but I take comfort in the fact that I can be far from perfect when it does. And I surely won’t end up as a perfect character, but I like to believe that something incredible is in store for me. Not that I should just wait around for it, but it’s nice to believe that everything is going to be okay.
One day, I’ll have my own Chapter One. I might be a hot mess, but we’ll just go with it.
My story will be written.
On days as sad as this one, it’s nice to believe that this might one day happen to me. It’s nice to escape into the mind of my 10-year-old self and believe that I am the star of my own story.
It’s nice to find books refreshing.
SINCERELY, SAMMY 