After all this time? by Stefany

After all this time? by Stefany - October 2020 Scholarship Essay

They are so much more than what people perceive them to be - the human eyes. The eye is above simply being a sense organ that reacts to light and allows vision. It’s a portal - a gate to the literary world unbound by limitations - a reality free of restrictions. Literature adds to our reality and makes it extraordinary. It makes us powerful, and in a time of confusion, panic, and frustration, all we need is a little magic and a train ride to Hogwarts to keep going.
As I prepared for my next exam on a warm spring day, I looked over at my calendar: March 13, 2020. I wasn’t thinking about quarantines and hand washing, but of the SAT and credit hours. I recall being so stressed about assignment deadlines that I had started drinking more coffee than water. I was alive, but I wasn’t living; I was complacent in my mundane life. However, after that day, my reality would never be the same.
As the days of quarantine dragged on, I began to lose myself. I became a shell of who I once was, a being with no purpose or power. So, as each week merged into the next, I decided that I would go on a journey back into the most blissful times of my life: my childhood. I sat down and I read the best piece of literature I have ever had the privilege of knowing: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
It was glorious. With each page, I was reminded of why I loved the hours I spent rereading the novels as a child, every chapter filled me with more wonder than the last. As a human who has been on this earth for seventeen years, I was mesmerized by every description of the old Hogwarts building and magical creatures. It was as if I was seeing the world J.K. Rowling wrote for the first time, every word filling me with a happiness that the meekness of quarantine made me forget.
To this day, that memory of rereading that book is one of my happiest memories of 2020 because it was pure euphoria. I was reminded of being a child who thought she had the world in her hands, who dreamed bigger than reality; I was flashed back to a period of my life where stress and worry didn’t exist, only novels and the worlds they held between the pages. I was reminded of magic and stardust - of a life I never realized I missed. After all this time, I finally realized that I had abandoned what used to be my favorite part of myself: my wonder.
From that day on, my quality of life became so much better. Nothing physically or financially changed in my corona affected life, but that ceased to matter. As long as I had my wonder and words, my life was fulfilled, because reading gave my life meaning. And I know that one day, I will be sitting in a rocking chair, a Harry Potter book in my hands, and a smile on my face as someone walks in, shakes their head fondly, and asks, “after all this time?” and I will look up, my eyes made of steel and fire, and reply with no hesitation in my voice. “Always.”