I am a fiction addict.

I am a fiction addict.

Give me a sappy love story or a witch solving crimes and I am all wrapped up. I have read and enjoyed non fiction in my life, books that have been wonderfully, life-change-ing-ly illuminating. As with anything, there have been some that did not resonate with me because I found them mind numbingly boring. After all not every book speaks to every reader and sometimes we are simply not ready for what is between the covers.

My fiction addiction is not bound by paper only! Give me your ridiculously cheesy movies and TV shows, I also love a good audio book while I’m doing housework. What is the draw of fiction for me? Just that, its FICTION. It’s not real life, it’s as unlikely as it can be. There are only actors or characters, no real people have been harmed in the making of these imaginary worlds.

I can have my pulse race and my heart crushed only to turn the page, or wait a few minutes, and most times (unless it’s a multi part series) the villain is caught and the lovers reunite. The stories wrap up so very neatly and it’s warm fuzzies for all 😉 For me I love the times when when my imagination soars, anything is possible and love conquers all!

Real life on the other hand is messy. It’s painful and can just be downright sucky some times. It can also have times of beauty and peace, times of fulfillment and purpose. Dr. Seuss Had it right when he wrote the book “Oh The Places You’ll Go” Ups or downs, rights or lefts, stays or goes, successes AND failures, and the waiting.. I wait on things, people but mostly, I think I wait for myself.

I wait to have the motivation, the courage (that’s a big one for me!) I wait to wait because I can not see any way through. I wait because I am scared of an outcome that is out of my control. I wait to feel worthy of something. No one else is as good at holding me back as me, I’m a pro!

That is not to say that I am a perpetual wait-er (not Waiter as, of course, that is a job not a state of mental readiness and no one wants their Waiter to be a wait-er.. ). I have run and jumped when the occasion called for it, there have been more that a few times when I have bluffed my way through and let bravado rule the moment. (As the saying says “Fake it till you make it” or to take the quote back to its origin, “What ere thou art act well thy part”.) I have studied and learned and worked and sweat to bring things to pass.

But sometimes, I do wait and when I am there in that waiting place, ahh my darling Fiction comes and pulls me out again. It swallows me up and rolls me around and spits me out again and I see the world with fresh, admittedly sometimes silly eyes. I reemerge into the world where the happy endings of the latest book I’ve read, or show I’ve watched, help to remind me that it is all about perspective. I don’t have to live in all the bad and evil of the world, I don’t have to carry things that crush me a little more every day.

I get to choose how I face each day.

I am an addict, an unrepentant, sappy addict. And now you know.  So….”Take a look, It’s in a book!”

-Apria