As I write this, I am the only person on the quiet floor of the library. It is bliss.

I have always been enamored with libraries. I am an introvert through and through, so a place where you are not expected to make small talk is my heaven. Anxiety can make my brain shout sometimes. On top of the general noise of every day life, the shouting can be tiresome. But libraries are quiet. Sitting in the silence means my brain can be quiet too. Not only are libraries calming, they are also the only place that is literally built to hold my favorite things: books.

I once wrote in a paper that books were my “escape.” It’s a common conclusion for book-lovers; by reading someone else’s story, the problems of your life are left behind. When I turned the paper in, my professor challenged my conclusion. She proposed that books aren’t necessarily escapes. They don’t take us out of life, she suggested, but rather bring us further into life. I was confused; I remember sitting in her office and momentarily losing the formal, polite guard that is required for professor office visits by just staring at her and saying “uhm…wait what?” I didn’t get it at the time, but then I thought back about my history with books and I realized she was right.

I was a nervous kid with a tendency to overreact. An anxiety disorder that would not be diagnosed until I was eighteen and no outlet made for a lot of stomach aches and nervous crying whenever I was faced with an unfamiliar situation. That is, until, I learned to read chapter books and realized I preferred the world of fiction to that of reality. There wasn’t room for anxiety when my mind was filled with Harry, Ron, and Hermione running from a three-headed dog or Lucy finding Narnia on the other side of a wardrobe.

When my life was too much and confronting my anxiety was too scary, books offered me, if only for just a few chapters, a new life. As I grew older and anxiety continued to lurk behind the corners of my mind, books continued to bring me life, but not because they were escape routes. I was never escaping something. Books were simply letting me exchange my demons for a characters, which, in turn, helped me conquer my own. I’m still at war with some of those demons, but thanks to books and libraries, I don’t have to struggle alone.