Future Literate Me

By the books I own, I can trace out a map of my life story from its beginning with The Happy Caterpillar snuggled under the covers with my stuffed rabbit to the rainy morning I inexplicably felt that my childhood was ending as I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Even though I could be classified as a nomad, having moved around New York seven times in the past decade, my collection of hardcovers has acted as my compass to guide me through the rockiest parts of my life engulfed in oceans of sadness or volcanoes of anger. A pharmacist couldn't have prescribed a better remedy than losing myself to an imaginary world where there was an answer to every question and the quietness was not shouting questions in my ear. Ten years from now I will still remain convinced that life is a treasure hunt to which books hold the key-some boxes will inevitably lead towards other boxes, but every once in while I unlock a goldmine containing a small piece of perfection. For years, the ability to pick the locks of these boxes to unearth their secrets, literacy, was not hampered on a page for me, instead it grew as I wrote an archive of  blueprints on the sturdy paper of my mind to tear what I read to shreds and glue it back together. Every author's masterpiece became part of an experimental game to test the limits of my own imagination and break down the barriers of what little I knew about myself. Now, these urges to play author strike at the strangest moments- whether I'm lying awake staring at my ceiling at 2 am (desperately trying to resist the midnight snacking urge) or sprinting down the track while my breath cannot keep up, I return to my true home hidden away in Hogwarts or Narnia (it all depends on my mood). My future home will undoubtedly contain an unhealthy amount of books (probably cats too..) which causes company some struggle in navigating my household, and earns the knowing glances of my family members as I strike up a conversation about "staying gold" (Outsiders reference, anyone?) to the bemused faces of my companions.The maze of foraging a new future for the characters I mentally meet and even come to love through the books I read will always be a challenge that intrigues my inexhaustible mind. Printed words will never be safe within their covers as they are spun a new life of their own as my unwritten edits fall like water droplets during a rainstorm.They will fuse my own adventures into the great unknown with the best and brightest of these novels sparking a chain reaction for my lifelong hypothesis that the human condition is meant to be exploited. The motif of all the books I have stored in broken shelves, or pasted to the walls of my mind palace is that an alternative ending isn't just fictional. Each of us can use our life as a template for a new beginning where all the ends meet and dreams become a backdrop to the transcendence of life. After all, there will always be a new hill to climb sometimes only with the comfort of a moral compass and bit of luck on the side.
(an idea of what my room will look like in 10 years when I become that "book lady" with nine inch spectacles)