Written By Neha Patel

We talk about first love like it’s supposed to be a Disney movie with a happily ever after. Preferably with our Prince Charming. However, my happily ever afters were etched into the pages of books. I don’t know when I first fell in love with books. All I can say is that my private elementary school invested a lot of money into its classroom libraries and implemented an elaborate points-based program that encouraged us kids to read. Now I know what you’re thinking: “I hated reading for school.” This is something I’ve heard throughout my life from every other person I’ve met. But honestly? I loved reading for school. 

What can I say? As the child of Indian immigrants, schoolwork was my work. A “B” meant I was failing, so I spent hours studying and making sure that my grades made my parents proud. I wasn’t studying for myself. I was studying for them. But this made homework and being in school stressful. I was studying, not learning anything. The only goal was to get that “A” and nothing else. 

But that tension always left my body the second I cracked open a book. Looking back, it honestly made no sense. Logically, books were homework, so they should’ve made me feel tense and stressed, just like the Pythagorean theorem or the Krebs cycle. But they did the exact opposite. 

I can’t even tell you which book made me fall hard for books. All I can tell you is that it swept me away from the stress of studying, gave me experiences I would otherwise never have had (because I was studying all the time), and introduced me to people I would other never meet (I blame imaginary numbers). 

Books were magic. And isn’t that what love is anyway? A form of magic? 

The strength of love, however, is not that rush you feel when you first discovered it. No. It’s the fact that you feel that rush whenever the object of your love is nearby. 

Even in the darkest moments of my life, books were always there for me. 

When my family moved from California to Mississippi, I was lonely and isolated. Looking back, I’m sure I suffered from depression. In fact, if you asked me what I was doing at the age of 16, I wouldn’t be able to paint a clear picture. All I remember is being in a year-long funk. Fortunately, I brought my burgeoning collection of books to the Hospitality State and escaped into fantasy worlds with dark lords to thwart. With the gray cloud hanging over my head that year, books were my raincoats and umbrellas. I couldn’t stop the freezing rain, but I could survive it. 

I know now that books directly impact mental and physical health by increasing empathy and even social skills. Unlike the homework that was assigned every day while in school, which only helped me to memorize a canned set of facts, books gave me a telescope to see things I was blind to. 

I’ll be honest: I wasn’t always faithful to books. When I moved to Alabama for college, I was taking hardcore biology and chemistry courses for my bachelor’s in biology, and it was knocking me out. The stress hit hard, and I stopped reading for pleasure. This went on for almost two years. Sure, I’d read a book here or there, but I cheated with an addictive partner named Netflix. 

Like books, Netflix whisks you away to different places. Unlike Netflix, books are telescopes that show you the world more clearly. Reading is an active experience that leaves you feeling nourished and enriched. It is an escape, but one that reboots your brain. Netflix is not nourishing. At least not in my experience. It’s not a telescope or even a window. It’s a black hole that sucks you in, and you have to fight to get out of it. 

My stress exponentially increased in college. The real world suddenly became too much, and I ran away into the streamed world offered by Netflix. 

During my third year in college, I took the plunge and began taking English literature courses because I needed to make a change. I still attended my science classes but walking into a seminar and discussing something I loved was refreshing and a far cry from hastily jotting down notes while a professor drawled about mRNA. Instead, I was talking about existentialism, feminism, and colonialism with my classmates. It was an open dialogue about how the literature connected and disconnected us. Taking those classes was hands down the best decision I made in college. 

I also need to thank the Walmart I frequented during college for carrying a decent array of books. For the first two years, I rushed past the book section but finally stopped to smell the rose (read: pages) after acing my first round of English essays. I walked out of Walmart that day with apples, a box of brownie mix, frozen peas I was never going to use, canned soup, and five books. It felt like walking about with treasure. 

The funk and depression I had during my first two years of college took time to work through. But reigniting my love of books jumpstarted the healing process (the brownies also helped). In all honesty, I forgot myself during those two years, and books reminded me of what I stood for.

As you do after taking a break from a relationship, it took time for me to get back into the swing of things with my bibliophilic ways. The relationship was not the same. Instead of being the hardcopy purist I once was, I now read ebooks and a few years later would get into audiobooks. Instead of reading predominantly young adult novels, I branched out to narrative nonfiction, fiction written by BIPOC writers, and short stories. 

My love of books isn’t the perfect metaphor for the love two humans share. But my relationship with them is powerful. Like any good relationship, they challenged me to be a better version of myself. They certainly weren’t a panacea to my college tribulations, but thanks to them I was empowered to take charge of my academics and grow.