C0wboylik3m3 - You’re A Cowboy Like Me

Well loved books.

I am in firm belief that books should be well loved. they should be written in, the spine should be cracked, the pages should be folded, things you find during the adventures you take squished between the pages. The more damage done to a book, the more memories and love are in it and there's something so beautiful about a well loved book. it tells a story. it's like a scrapbook of that time in your life whilst you've read it and when you pick it up again after a while of finishing it you can look back at the life you lived while the book traveled with you.

I've started packing my things to put into storage while i'm away at college and I picked up my very well loved copy of Red, White And Royal blue that I read last summer and was flipping through it. it had water damage from me accidently dropping it in my pool and writing in it and different keepsakes from things I did that summer. it has things that I wrote that i never spoke to another living soul, thoughts of love, insecurity that the ink on the pages written by the author reminded me of.

"I don't think I ever thought I would have proper true friends until gr. 12 and now with september almost here and half of my friends going to college it's definitely gone. I hope to feel this truly happy again soon" is messly written on page 201 in pink glitter pen. I wrote that at 18 about the loss of my huge friend group leaving while I stayed and went back to school for another year, needing a missing credit to get into college. I was already feeling like I failed having to go back for another year and losing my friends and reading about Henry, Alex, Nora, and June partying and Alex having that moment of realization of found family made me realise that I most likely won't have that comfort again. Looking back at it now being on the cusp of 20, that friend group was the farthest from friendship, I had just romaticided it. We had moments where it was friendship, in its purest form but overall it turned into something toxic and by the end most of us hated each other and we split into two groups, but the girl who left the scribbled note in the pool water damaged book didn't know that yet. She didn't know what came from that friend group. The friendships that truly blossomed from it, the trips and adventures she'd have with the few friends that made it out of that friend group. She got so, so much closer to her favorite people. She has never been happier then she has now starting the new chapter of her life in a big city, and having the best friends she could ever ask for.

The seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, the well loved book i've brought on my most recent adventures. Lies sand in the crevices of a few pages where I had been reading it on the beach with my friends this summer, the ones that made it out of my Red, White and royal blue adventures.

damaged books are well loved books,

well loved books keep memories,

and well loved books are scrapbooks.