I remember loving to read, from an early age up until my freshman year of high school.

Growing up with bookshelves upon bookshelves filled with different mystery and horror novels ranging from James Patterson to Stephen King, it was hard not to fall in love with reading. While I was too young to read those books at first, my parents would always take my siblings and me to the library where we could pick out as many books as we wanted. Usually my sisters would grab one or two, whereas I would grab triple the amount, gobbling each book up within a couple of days.

Reading was a source of comfort for me—I was able to transport myself into a completely different world, put myself in someone else’s shoes and imagine how I would’ve handled a situation differently or similarly to the main character. Some days, I was a pre-teen with magical powers who lived in a castle and other days I was a teenager working during the summer at a catering company and falling in love with my co-worker. The possibilities were endless. In between classes, after school, even during the middle of church (much to the disapproval of my parents), I always found time to pull out my book and transport to a different world. It was perfect.

It even pushed me to start creating my own stories, although they never wound up making it past the first chapter before being crumpled into a ball and thrown into my trash bin. But still, the love for these books and writing would continue on as a constant in my heart.

Until one day it didn’t.

I don’t remember what made me detach myself from my reading and writing. Maybe it might have been the overload of homework, or relying heavily on social engagements outside of school, but my drive toward reading was gone. Reading began to feel like a chore. I found myself procrastinating reading assigned books for school, where past me would have been absolutely thrilled to have some new material to read. It was as if the spark had been blown out and there was no way of fixing it.

This continued for quite some time, extending well into my college career until my junior year. At this time, I started working at Iona’s bookstore where I was able to surround myself with all the books the store had to offer. When business was slow one day, I picked up Lauren Groff’s “Fates and Furies” and began to read. While the book wasn’t as great as I had imagined, it still was enough to reignite the once burnt-out spark that I had for reading.

From there, I began to start picking up more and more books that the bookstore had to offer. I was reading what I could in between helping customers, restocking merchandise and other daily duties. It was as if I had never taken that break from reading and everything had returned to normal. It was wonderful. Now I had a better way to spend my time rather than staring at a screen for a longer period of time than I’m willing to admit, and I also feel some of my creative side beginning to come back.

I’ll leave you with this final note: if you have brushed aside something that you were once passionate about, maybe try to reacquaint yourself with it. It doesn’t matter how long ago it’s been or if you feel like things won’t be the same—trying is the first step in bridging the gap from past you to present you.