How Stories and Magic Saved My Life: A Note on the Power of Fiction.

I can’t explain my need for magic.

To believe in the unexplained, the intangible, inexplicable - but it has always been there.

And it feels a lot like hope.

It’s difficult to explain what stories meant to me as a child, teenager, and then adult. The safety it brought.

Anything magical, epic, or fantastical was my immediate favourite and right up my alley.

Was it an escape?

Yes. 

Rightfully so.

I’d dealt with debilitating anxiety and depression in my teens and twenties and escaping into stories, novels, anime, comics, etc., was the easiest way to get out of my own head - which was a rather dangerous neighbourhood at the time. 

My perceived reality was rather dire.

But, oh,

The gift to be in someone else’s world for a time.

To see their courage, strength, ingenuity, in the face of the things they didn’t choose, and never wanted to face. Because my favourite heroes, favourite characters, never gave up either - even if they were going through hell.

(Or a potential end of realms, depending on the plot’s level of doom.)

And I hung onto them and their stories like a lifeline.

That if they could hang on, if they could find a way - maybe I could, too.

Face the world. Make something of the things I’d been given, whether I chose them or not. Help others. Look for brightness in the seeming dark. Smile. Laugh again. Love.

That tiny thread that said:

“Maybe if they can, then maybe things can end beautifully for me, too…

Just maybe.”

The hope that maybe there’s something guiding us in this seeming chaos. Maybe things can be brighter, and maybe things can get better after all. 

That even though there is unfathomable loss, confusion, and pain - that there can be great beauty, too.

Because even when things felt the most scary or chaotic, seeming as though there was no way out - there was always a rhyme or reason to the seeming madness.

And my favourite characters that I fell in love with and gave me the most hope?

They never gave into despair. Moments of it? Certainly. But they never gave in completely.

Because there was always a way.

Even if they couldn’t see it yet.

And they would bloody try anyway.

It’s easy to look around our current reality of what we’re collectively facing in the world, and see that some of us are truly in a living hell.

The likes of which many of us would never wish on anyone, as they are unfathomable atrocities we can’t begin to imagine.

Some are in that unfathomable place.

Some of us have inherited hells.

Some of us are in hells of our own making.

I’m not entirely certain what prompted me to start writing this at 1am - but simply that it was there for me to say,

To you, in whatever darkness you are currently facing:

to hang on.

Grab onto whatever tiny thread you can.

Believe in whatever you can, as hard as you can, with whatever words you can.

Appreciate the bright moments, the flashes, when they come - and look for them with everything you have.

Hold them.

And let them hold you.

And know that you’re not alone.

And know that maybe, just maybe, if you’re willing to reach out, 

there’s great magic here for you, too. 

xx

-Kate