Lexical Fixations

Just a Girl Obsessed with Words

Photo by Romain Vignes on Unsplash

I have always been obsessed with words.

As a child, I would climb up on the counter, crack open the dictionary, and fill my little brain with abnormal lexemes. I was a girl in love with semantics. Turns out, some things never change.

I am not sure what exactly drew me to words as a little girl. Was it their beautiful rounded shapes, dancing across pages? Was it the crinkle of pages, the smell of lacquered paper? Was it the tales woven through little black marks? Marks that could take me far away, through strange lands and unfamiliar places? Or was it something more? A deep, visceral knowledge that I was made for words, made to live in them as a dragon dwells in its cave, my hoard of ink and paper and otherworlds.

Whatever the reason, I have always felt drawn to words. Sensed their power. Dipped my fingers in ink and spread my thoughts upon this big bright beautiful world.

I learned to read when I was about three years old, and it was like unlocking entire universes beyond my small comprehension. Suddenly nothing was out of reach. We would go to the library every week, me and my brothers, loading our arms with as many books as we could carry, going home to spend the rest of the day reading. It was more than a pastime. It was a fixation. A lifestyle. I lived and breathed words. My entire childhood was one story after another, woven through with my own wild imaginings.

And then, one day, I began to write my own stories. With crayons and construction paper, pens and clipboard, keyboard and notebook. I finished my first novel when I was twelve years old, and I knew there was no going back. If there had been other options before, they had been erased, blotted out. There was only one option left.

Words. It had always been words. I dreamed words, created them, bled them. Wherever I was, my mind was always far away, in the darkest depths of Mordor, in the bustling city of London, in some unnamed countryside dreaming up new worlds and citizens to populate them.

From novels I gained an innate understanding of the world around me. A knowledge of the way people’s minds worked. A sturdy moral compass. And a very dramatized view of the world, one I bear to this day.

Fictional characters remain some of my very best companions, and I remain firmly stubborn in my opinion thar they are better than real people. (They don’t argue back, for one thing.)

Words in all forms fascinate me. Word art, classic novels, epic medieval poetry, grocery lists. The sheer number of ways words can be used is astounding. Encompassing everything from bad jokes to thesis on philosophy, rowdy sea shanties to lyrical prose. The shape of words, the sound of them, the way they translate differently into other languages, the way they mean different things to different people, well, what could be more exciting than that?

In the end, perhaps it was inevitable. I grew up with words. I lived in a house always pleasantly filled with books with parents all too willing to read to us whenever we asked it of them. Was it any surprise that I held stories in my hands and was lost to miles of creamy white pages? Was it any shock that I became drawn in to inked words, the promise of knowledge and new experience? Was it any surprise that I grew up with a pen in my hand and stars in my eyes, ready to change the whole world one sentence at a time?

I think not. Some things are bound to happen. Destined as changing tides and dreams fulfilled.

Words make the world a better place. A richer place. A place where you can live a hundred thousand lives and understand what it is to be alive. What it is to be part of this world.

I do not believe I will ever abandon my precious words. They have certainly never abandoned me. It is not, I think, a fleeting obsession, but a lifelong passion. Words can breathe life into the past, and bring hope to the future. Touch the soul and affect the mind.

Words, in short, are the bravest kind of magic there is.