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I never belonged here.

The funny thing was I never really belonged anywhere. No matter where I was in life, I would always dream of something more, somewhere where I could truly belong and be completely at home. It could be any number of places; locations in books or films, daydreams of my own creations, places that I saw while travelling or on the television. It was never anywhere where I actually was, though.

It hurt.

I didn’t know when the first moment of realisation came to me, because as far back as I can remember, I was always aware of the fact that most other people had some sort of roots to fall back on. They could easily tell me their hometown, or who their grandparents were. They could give me a place they loved to be, and they could remember the house they grew up in. I didn’t have any of that. My hometown could barely be called that – I popped out when my parents were on a passing visit and I’ve never been back. I’ve spent a total of twenty-four hours in the place I was born, and have no memories of it. My family isn’t close, so gradually I’ve lost touch with everyone but my parents. We constantly moved thanks to my father’s job, so I don’t have any memories of a place where I spent a great portion of growing up. My memories are all of terrifying new schools, of always being the outsider, or finally making friends and then being wrenched away and having to start all over again. It was always me coming into a new school in the middle of the year, always me standing on the outskirts of the groups that had all formed months or even years before, always me who wouldn’t know the routines or the rules that cropped up in every different school; who you don’t talk to, who you do, the good teachers and the bad ones, all the little bits of knowledge that local kids would know. I was never part of that group. I was always the one who had to learn as quickly as I could, and gradually, the older I got, I began to realise that I was also listed as one of those kids who weren’t meant to be associated with.

My friends, the ones who stuck with me, were all in my imagination or in the pages of countless books, which really went down well with the other kids. By that, I mean I was even more of an outsider, because I was the bookworm or the dreamer or the one with all the weird ideas. Even my parents began to call me out of it.

“When are you going to stop playing pretend?” they would ask, when they found me up at all hours, writing my own adventures with my own characters who had quickly become my family.

“What are you going to do for a real job?” was the main question, when I spoke of how I wanted to be a writer and how I wanted to live my life in the arts.

“How is that a real degree?” I was asked, when I decided to study English further when I went to college.

“Aren’t you a little old for imaginary friends?” was a favourite should I mention any of my characters.

“Why do you waste so much time with things that don’t exist?” came up whenever I was buried in a book, or researching the weird and wonderful things I could find online.

Was it really any wonder that I buried myself further into the life of fantasy when the real world had no time for someone like me? All I could do was try so desperately to keep myself in that world as long as possible; to live safely in my head, to hide among the pages of my books, to run into the worlds I created myself and only come out when it was absolutely necessary.

Of course, I knew I couldn’t do that for forever. It wasn’t a case of secretly believing anything the adults around me told me – no, quite the opposite, really, as the more they put me down the more determined I was to succeed. It was the fact that I didn’t want to be adrift for the rest of my life, it was a personal thing. I wanted to belong, and I was convinced that somewhere out there, I would find such a place. It became my mission to find it, and I knew, deep down, that it was out there somewhere.

So, on the long nights where I would hide in my room, sketching my characters or planning my stories or reading my books, I would remind myself of that. With the expressions of doubt still running through my head and those condescending terms echoing loudly in my ears, I would comfort myself with those friendly words, the only solid things in my life.

Every time I ran up the stairs to get to my place of safety, I would catch myself in my bedroom mirror as I shut and locked my bedroom door. I would blink the tears away, I would take a shuddering breath to calm myself, I would give myself the most determined expression I could, and I would make myself a promise.

“I’ll take you far away from this one day, okay?”

When my reflection smiled back at me, I would know that I would be just fine. I would never break my promises, especially when right now I only had myself to rely on in such a strange and scary place.

Well, I would remind myself, with another small smile in the direction of my bookshelf. Not quite.

For now, I would belong in the pages.

It was something that I would tell myself all through growing up, right back to my earliest memories. As soon as I could hold a book and understand the combinations of letters on the faded pages, I would repeat to myself that I belonged there, and that somewhere out there, I would find a place that make all of this worth it. I had my friends in the pages, and until I found a place to settle in the world around me, I would be welcome there. Even when I did finally settle, I knew I would never turn my back on those who had been there for me when no one else had been.

So, I grew up, and somehow I managed to cling on to my faith and my dreams, even though the odds seemed constantly stacked against it.

“Have you changed your mind on your major?” my mother would ask me, when she saw me pouring eagerly through college information.

“No,” I would say bravely, holding up the page I was looking at. Without a doubt, it would always be the page of the English departments. The disapproval slowly began to have no more hold over me. I realised now that I was an adult, that it was up to me to do what I loved and then I would be able to prove everyone wrong.

Most of all, I just wanted to be involved with something I knew I would enjoy, surrounded by people that would understand.

Well, they would understand most of it. There were some things, some little things, that I kept to myself. My promise, for a start, because that was the deal. I had to have something completely my own to spur myself on, and the promise that one day I would get myself far away from this place, all off my own back, was something that excited me as much as it terrified me.

The other thing was that I was convinced that, in times of the greatest doubt, my books would come to my aid. Not in the way a person might expect; they might assume that I would lose myself in their stories and characters and I was happy to let them believe that. I would never tell them that I thought there was something more to it, because that was another thing that was my little secret, and to be honest I don’t think anyone would believe me anyway. I would be upset if no one believed me, and so I guessed it was just safer to keep it to myself.

I knew the truth, though. On the long nights where I might not be able to fully convince myself, those books would do it for me. I would never see it clearly, because the room was darker than dark at night – darkness was where I felt the safest. But, as I lay awake and my eyes gradually adjusted to the solid darkness around me, I would see shapes. Hundreds and hundreds of them, in fact, clambering over my books, moving down the bookshelves, scampering across the floor. I could never be totally sure if I was really awake, but it was comforting all the same. The soft patters of feet and the movement around me would calm me, and I never did question it, not even when I was little. I just seemed to know, deep down, that this was something for my eyes only. It helped more than I could have ever imagined.

I made my escape when I was eighteen years old and moved cross-country to university. I excelled in my English degree, as I always knew I would, and what’s more is that I found people who didn’t scoff at me when I had my head buried in a book. My best friend at university, and the first true friend I ever had outside of ink and paper, would simply come and sit next to me and take out her own book. We would curl up together and read, occasionally laughing or muttering out loud, and when one of us finished a book we would comfort one another. Finishing a book, my friend said, was always like losing a friend.

“I always used to get odd looks when I said that,” I confessed one day, and she smiled, her dark skin practically glowing with the excitement of the story.

“So did I,” she admitted. “But I never changed the way I felt. In fact, I kind of felt sorry for everyone around me, because I’d just gotten back from an amazing adventure and they were still in their chairs, none the wiser. How many adventures do they miss out on, just sitting there?”

“Too many,” I agreed. “That’s the beauty about books, though. I could pick one up years later and still feel as though no time had passed between then the last time I had read it.”

“They always seemed to be happy when I returned,” my friend giggled in reply. “I know that sounds odd to most people, but you’ll understand. Whenever I curled up with an old favourite, I would always feel as though they were happy to see me.”

“So did I. Especially at night; I don’t know. It seems that in the darkness, the strangest of possibilities can come true.”

It was the closest I had ever come to admitting the fact that I believed my books had been more than paper-based friends. For a moment I wondered why I had even mentioned it, because I was convinced that everyone could see into my head now, and knew what a crazy thought I had been so convinced of for all these years. I was standing on the very edge of having my faith shattered around me, but when I finally looked up to stare at my friend properly, wondering what he silence meant, it couldn’t have been more different.

“You saw them too, didn’t you?” she asked, her voice completely breathless and the brown of her big eyes reflecting nothing but wonder.

I nodded, and she smiled, and just like that we knew that we both finally belonged.