Remembering Nights Long Gone, and Witching Hour Realizations

Today I was thinking about my childhood, and even before I hit puberty I was a notorious night owl. It was funny because all though I looked forward to "bedtime" it was only because it was at this time that I knew the adventures that were soon to cross my path, suck me in, and mercilessly hold me until my wearing eyes could no longer manage to stay open to the wonder before me. Books, o how they enthralled me, I read everything I could get my hands on, but I was always drawn towards fantasy, science fiction, and adventure books. Through the words of hundreds of different authors, whose names I did not know, nor was really interested at the time. I just wanted the words, the sentences, the chapters, the stories! To fly in space, to meet a robot, to cast a spell, I wanted all these things, and in a way I had them. In fact these stories were a sort of special reality for me, I felt what they felt, I went where they went, I saw what they saw. The wonders that I was able to witness as a child are equally fantastic to the wonders I witness now as an adult, although they are vastly different. These nights I would stay up till three or four in the morning, and not even miss the sleep. Just wondrous feelings of joy, fear, loathing, sadness, longing. From books I received my most vivid nightmare, some of my favorite adventures, and my greatest yearnings.

One particular night as I was reading a book about wizards, magic, wonder, and danger, I realized for the first time, this was all fake. My life would never contain me shooting magic out of my fingers, or even a wand, I would never travel to a far land and ride in to battle next to a wizard, an elf, a dwarf, and a lost king. I wouldn't travel to unknown reaches of space and lead a war against an alien race. I wouldn't even take innocuous journeys to forgotten lands and travel through the earth or a rabbit hole. My life was real, and theirs was fiction. How I longed, and pleaded with reality to suddenly change, to allow me, just once, into the magical realm that I had held so often in my mind. To experience these things, not with my minds eye, but with my entire being. That night, when all this came crashing down, I cried. I cried that I would never meet these people, that I would never get to live as they live, I would never see what they saw, and I would never experience what they experienced. I thought of how unlucky I was, and to this day I still feel remorse that reality is so real. I cried myself to sleep that night, and a little of the magic was lost, but my imagination remained strong at least.

I still reread those books that I read as a child from time to time. Remember what it was like to sit next to a king, to ride an ancient horse, to talk to trees, to dance with elves. It isn't the same, but I have realized that real life is beautiful. There is magic, our very existence is magic. Look at what we have around us. From the simplest of seeds grows life! How unimaginable is that? Though I once thought we lived in a plain world, I now see, it is as magical as a world can possibly be.