Living a thousand lives

I wish I were living the life I read in books.

The 5-year-old me loved fairytales; she imagined herself crossing paths with a prince and dancing in a royal ball. The 7-year-old me pictured a fun high school life similar to a series of fiction novels her mom bought. Then, the 14-year-old me who discovered young adult novels began to romanticize love and daily life, no matter how mundane it could be. However, this may not be the case for a girl from a middle-class family living in a developing country. The little girl in me only got to live those whimsical lives through flipping pages.

My love for reading started in third grade when my mom gifted me a box of “Wimpy Kid” books for Christmas. I remember it being a fun book and included black-and-white drawings and illustrations. From there, I started joining the school’s library club and reading “Nancy Drew” books, “Dork Diaries,” and “Archie” comics; my mind then began replacing the main characters with my image. “This life must be nice,” I thought. As I put myself in their shoes, I tried to plot my future similar to theirs—exciting, wild, and glamorous.

High school happened and I was excited to experience all the little I had read—prom, mall trips after classes, sleepover parties, and even wanting my campus crush to reciprocate my feelings! I mapped out these scenarios in my head as I read more and more, and then I discovered romantic love and adulting through novels. I found myself glamorizing such a life. At puberty, wanting to grow faster occupied my mind.

I went through my high school. No exciting, wild, and glamorous thing happened.

What I encountered was waiting for a jeepney at midday, hoping one would pass by with a seat left because I could not take the blistering heat; dreading dismissal as commuting in Manila traffic is tiring; declining invites to stroll in malls because I didn’t have enough money to engage in such leisure; worrying about tuition increases; answering math worksheets at midnight; practicing for dance presentations; not experiencing prom because of the pandemic.

It dawned on me that life will never be sunshine and rainbows. Life is not as magnificent as books painted it to be. The lives narrated by the books I collected will remain printed in ink, no matter how much I try to copy and paste them into my life story.

I stopped hoping to have a similar path as them. I stopped reading to feed my delusions; I began reading to imagine, withdraw from reality, and indulge in stories seemingly perfect and exquisitely threaded scene by scene. I treated my books as an escape from my mediocre life and a tool to amplify my imagination. Books offered the break I needed from the life I was not content with and the reality I accepted—that my life is a never-ending up and down, frequently in between. Instead of altering my life to imitate what I read in novels, I only let myself be the character as I read. Once I close the book, I allow reality to embrace me again.

I found the essence of reading books: To live a plethora of life aside from mine. Whenever reality gets too tiring and boring, a flip through a novel takes me to a dimension away from my struggles and plight. My imagination lets me experience the magical life my reality wishes it to be. Reading allows me to create worlds and people as I please. It is appealing to think that with reading, I get to live a thousand lives in a lifetime and away from academic responsibilities, economic crises, and excruciating heat.

Books are beyond enhancing one’s comprehension, expanding a person’s vocabulary, or improving an individual’s language skills. Along with the fictitious narration are values and enlightenment that must be carried by the readers. These thousand lives I witnessed and lived through taught me lessons that helped me deal with mine. My mind embedded their experiences that people can weave into their realities and transform them into realizations to jump past their hurdles. Living these lives is an enchanting experience in itself as I get to tie fiction with reality seamlessly.

Life is no fairytale. My present self would tell the 5-year-old me that there is no prince charming and royal balls to dance to in life. She will dance with inflation and meager educational opportunities instead.

The 19-year-old me would assure my 7-year-old self that high school was fun. But it was not as exciting as the books she read; it entailed Mommy worrying about the tuition increase yearly and dealing with unruly classmates rather than campus crushes.

The country’s present condition would show the 14-year-old me that she would prefer to stay a teenager than to be an adult and experience adulting—paying bills, budgeting, and working for a minimum-paying job.

I still wish to live the life I read in books. But I guess I will just stick to buying novels to experience yet another life I will add to the thousands of lifetimes I have already lived and dreamed of.

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Clare Quintos Puno, 19, is a communication student from the University of the Philippines Baguio. She wishes never to lose her spark in writing.