We all remember the fairy tales that first introduced us to reading. There was always that one book, that one story, that first opened our minds to the possibility of more.
For some, reading is simply entertainment. For me, it started as an escape. As a kid searching for something better than the world I found myself in, books were more than just stories we read in class to try and pass the exam, they were my means of survival in a world that I was sure was trying to kill me. Books were/are everything.
In books, dragons are slain. The princess is saved. The heroes, against all odds, always win. There was justice, there was hope, and most importantly, there was an ending. That was the magic.
I remember reading King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. I saw sword fights, romance, and grand quests. I saw a vision of fairness, of honour. Camelot was a world where the king believed in equality, where every knight had a seat at the table, no one higher than the other. For an seven-year-old trying to understand why life felt so cruel, this was the blueprint for a better world that I wanted for myself
Because in real life, I was being bullied.
I was the youngest in class. Small. Quiet. And he was older, 11 years old to my 7. He was stronger, louder, and cruel. I still remember the threats. “If you don’t do my homework,” he’d say, “I’ll write a letter to my dead grandmother, leave it on her grave, and she’ll haunt you. She’ll kill your family.” I was 7. I believed him.
So I did his homework.
I kept quiet.
I shrank.
But in books? In books, Lubega was the one who got vanquished. In stories, bullies don’t get to win. They got turned into toads, exiled from kingdoms, or defeated in glorious battle. That’s why I fell in love with stories. Not just for the fantasy, but for the justice. Because in the books I read, someone like me could win.
But real life? Real life is messier. It’s not written with arcs and satisfying conclusions. Real life is the dark place where the villain wins, where the bully gets older and disappears, but leaves behind a version of you that never stops flinching.
Sometimes I wonder if Lubega’s bullying is the reason I’m the way I am now. But my mind almost immediately rejects that because I know that it’s more than that. Life has just been… unkind. Loss has followed me for so long that it has become the only language I know.
I’ve spent so much time trying to keep the people around me happy. Not because I wanted to please them, but because I was terrified of what would happen if I didn’t. If they got angry. If they left. If they said things they didn’t mean, because even words said in anger can cut deep. And they leave scars, but they also teach you to flinch forever.
And maybe that’s why I prefer books to people.
Books don’t expect you to show up for them. They don’t use your kindness as leverage. They don’t say they didn’t mean it when they break your heart. Books demand only your time and your imagination. And in return, they offer a beginning, a middle, and most importantly, a clear end.
Books end.
Life doesn’t. It just keeps coming, wave after wave. It’s unpredictable and unforgiving. Life is a storm with no eye. It’s a darkness dotted with brief stars, brief moments of peace, of light, and of hope. And for me, those stars are books. Books are the only things that have ever made this endless pit of sadness even slightly worth it.
My head is often a mess. It’s a jumble of anxiety, depression, overthinking, and old fears I can’t quite name. But when the weight of feeling becomes too heavy, too sharp, too much, I disappear into a book. Into someone else’s story. Because other people’s problems—no matter how tragic—are easier to hold than my own. And in those stories, the dragons still get slain.
But then there are the times when even that escape is taken from me.
That’s what I hate most about depression. Not just the sadness or the heaviness or the loneliness. It’s how it sneaks in and steals the very thing that used to keep me alive. When I’m at my lowest, I don’t even want to read. I can’t focus. I open a book, and the words slide off my brain like water off glass. The stories that once rescued me feel unreachable, and I feel lost in a place that even fiction can’t touch. And that’s when the hopelessness hits hardest.
When the thing that once saved me doesn’t work anymore, I start to wonder if anything will. That’s why I hate depression. Because it takes away my only means of survival. It leaves me stranded in my own head with no exit, no sword, no magic, no vanquished darkness.
When I can’t read, I feel like I’ve lost the last piece of myself that was still holding on.
But even then, even in those silent, dark spaces, I hold on to the memory of what books have done for me. I keep a space open in my heart for the stories I will return to, even if I can’t reach them right now. I tell myself the urge will come back. The light will return. It always has… eventually.
And when it does, I’ll open the page again.
And the dragon will be waiting to be slain.
