why you should read my favorite book.

From the time I was in fourth grade, I’ve known I was crazy. You’re probably not crazy, so you think I’m ridiculous and dramatic. But I know I’m crazy, and the funny thing is, I guess I’m becoming okay with that. If you’re not okay with that, then go read something else, because this essay doesn’t end with me realizing I am actually normal or that my insanity will one day magically disappear or even that there is medication for this sort of thing. I am honestly just a lunatic, and I probably always will be.

I think I was always crazy, but fourth grade is when I admitted it to myself, and my mom started calling in the therapists. We were assigned to read Bridge to Terabithia for 4th grade English, and I, being the creative soul and complete disaster that I was, procrastinated reading it until 7 PM the night before. We had had about a month to complete this task, so I knew I had better do some good skimming if I wanted to advance to fifth grade. I figured I’d thump through the chapters, get an idea of what happened, and use my brilliant ability to completely fake it to charm my teacher and fellow classmates. It had always worked before.

My plan crashed and burned the second I got to page 2. I was dying to know if Jess Aarons was going to win the 5th grade race. I was dying to know why his family didn’t understand him and how he was going to survive when at the ripe age of 10 he already felt abused by reality. I was transported into a world where I fit—where imagination and deep feeling and magic were part of the landscape.

I found myself in Leslie Burke. She appeared on page 9 and Moonlight Sonata rang in my ears. She was tough and complex and creative and completely comfortable in her own skin. She didn’t give a damn that the other kids thought she dressed weird or that she didn’t have a TV or that her parents were ‘hippies’—writers that the southern world of Lark Creek not only didn’t understand, but rejected. She rejoiced in her abnormality, she delighted in her insanity. Her soul sang to mine, and for the first time in my nine short years, I felt like I had a place in the world.

I read voraciously for hours, enthralled with the magical world of Terabithia Leslie and Jess create, jealous that they found each other, immersed in the way that they fed and nurtured each other and created a safe haven to protect their tender souls from the outside world. I couldn’t stop; I was hungry. Hungry to know that it is okay to see things from a different lens, hungry to know that this beautiful world wasn’t going to be destroyed right before my eyes. I could see the sun shining off the walls of the gold room so clearly it hurt my heart; I craved climbing to the tops of the trees of Terabithia so badly it made my fists clench.

I got to page 212 and almost collapsed. Jess’ beautiful world came tumbling down when Leslie drowned. I thought it was over. The magic in the universe was gone, shimmering for a fleeting second and then disappearing into a cloud of vapor. I resigned myself to a world of social constraints and superficial emotion, of always feeling misunderstood and repressed in my box of isolation. I cried and cried, not sure if I could continue reading. When Leslie died, a piece of me died.

But I was valiant. I read on, perhaps partly out of morbid curiosity to see how Jess could possibly withstand this giant defeat. I needed him to fight, because I wasn’t strong enough. The universe stood silent, uneasy and not sure where to turn from this point. Do we let the Janice Averys of the world take over? It seemed to be asking.

But Jess fought. He wavered, he sunk, but he did not give up. He took the gift of this little girl that had showed him the beauty inherent in the very fabric of the universe, and he held tight to it. He knew, better than I, that Leslie had endowed him with responsibility. So he marched on, with courage of heart and nobility of character. He knew that when Leslie died the magic didn’t die too. He would just have to learn to recognize it on his own.

By the last page, I was no longer crying out of sorrow, but crying because the infinite amount of pain and beauty in the universe was weighing on my soul. Leslie awakened the magic in the universe for Jess, and now it was Jess’ turn to awaken the magic in someone else. On Page 213 he fights on in the way we must all fight on--He takes his sister Maybelle’s hand and he introduces her to the land of Terabithia.

Maybe it took me until I was 9 to figure out was I was crazy. Or maybe it just took getting to know Leslie Burke to realize that crazy isn’t a bad thing, but a beautiful and noble thing if you use it to fight the giants of Terabithia and the suffering inherent in reality. It isn’t easy being crazy—people don’t like the way you dress, or they laugh at you because you don’t have a TV and see the beauty in sonnets and leaves and little boys named Jess that like to paint. Sometimes you wish you didn’t feel it in your soul when you heard a hummingbird sing or suffer with your mom as she battles terminal cancer. Sometimes you just want to surrender to the Janice Averys of the world and throw in the towel.

But Leslie taught me that Terabithia can be found anywhere. Leslie showed me that the magic is all around you, but first you have to find it inside of you. Leslie taught me that being crazy doesn’t mean you get to sit comfortably in a box of isolation for the rest of your life, but that with lunacy comes responsibility: the responsibility to fight on and awaken the magic in others, because there is suffering and pain in the universe, but there will always be more beauty. You just have to know how to see it.