She always ran.
Across hills that rolled farther than I could see. The tall grass brushed against her calves as she laughed over her shoulder, daring me to keep up. I always did.
The world she lived in felt impossibly large.
There were horses that knew the way home before sunset. Creeks cold enough to numb bare feet. Summers that stretched forever. Dresses with deep pockets full of smooth stones and Queen Anne's lace. An old oak tree whose branches stretched wide enough to hold whispered conversations and impossible dreams.
And just beyond the hill lived the neighbor.
He never seemed surprised to find her. Sometimes she'd discover him working on a fence. Other days, he'd be waiting by the creek, skipping stones across the water. They'd wander dirt roads together, with nowhere they needed to be, talking about ordinary things that somehow felt important.
Sometimes he'd stop mid-sentence and simply look at her, as though he'd forgotten what he was about to say. A breeze would catch the wisps of hair that had escaped from the ribbon at the back of her neck, and without a word, he'd brush them gently behind her ear.
I remember wondering what it must feel like to be looked at that way.
No one hurried her. No one asked her to make herself smaller. She laughed loudly. She cried honestly. She asked impossible questions. She climbed trees in long dresses. She walked barefoot on dirt roads. She wove lilac crowns and picked wildflowers to her content.
She took up space as though the world had been made with her in mind.
I loved that about her.
Or maybe...I loved who I discovered when I was with her.
Every afternoon, I found my way back to that meadow. I ran beside her. I fell in love when she fell in love. My heart raced when danger found her. My heart broke when hers did. I could feel the warmth of the afternoon sun and the cool creek around my ankles. Somewhere between those pages, the world grew quiet enough for me to breathe.
For a little while, I forgot there was any other way to live.
Then I'd hear my name. The spell would break.
I'd close the cover, slide the bookmark between the pages, and watch the meadow fold itself shut.
The horses. The creek. The neighbor. The grass. The flowers. The girl who laughed with her whole body. Gone.
I stood up from my bed and slipped back into a different story. One where I knew how to make myself smaller. Not invisible. Just... smaller. Smaller emotions. Smaller opinions. Smaller needs. Small enough that I could move through the day without taking up too much space.
That girl grew up. Became a mother herself.
And one afternoon, watching one of my daughters express the kind of wholehearted emotion I used to only borrow from books, I heard a voice say,
"I would never let you act like that."
The words caught me off guard. Not because they were new, but because they were familiar. I realized I'd been carrying them for years.
Another voice joined it. "Just wait until she can read. You'll never see her."
I knew exactly what that meant. Because I had been that little girl. The one who kept finding herself inside stories.
Only now I wonder if I misunderstood what those stories were giving me.
Stories didn't simply give me somewhere to hide. They gave me somewhere to expand. Somewhere I could borrow courage. Borrow delight. Borrow curiosity. Borrow belonging. Somewhere I didn't have to shrink.
Then I'd close the cover, hand all of those things back to her, and shrink myself until I fit inside my own life again.
I've spent much of my adult life wondering why I felt more alive inside fictional stories than I did inside my own. Now I wonder if every character I loved was carrying a small piece of the life I wasn't yet convinced I was allowed to live.
Maybe healing isn't becoming someone new.
Maybe it's realizing I was never borrowing her life at all. Maybe I was catching glimpses of my own.
And maybe, after all these years...I don't have to shrink anymore.
I finally see her.
I still love a good story.
I just don't need one to give me permission to be me.