the pages don’t change

LINK: the pages don’t change

What book has changed your life? How did it change your life?

Prompt created by yours truly. 
Feel free to use any prompts for November that I post and/or tag me.
I’d love to read your responses

There are two books that come to mind. Interestingly enough, they were books I read when I was younger, but their meanings have evolved as I’ve gotten older.

The Giving Tree.

I read this book as a child and again as an adult.

As a kid, I thought the tree was the embodiment of unconditional love. She was absolutely pure, generous, and selfless. She would do whatever she could to make that boy happy. She gave him everything, her apples… her branch… and her trunk. I remember thinking that this was what love was supposed to be like. I even thought that motherhood would be akin to this and wished my mom would have bent over backwards for me like the tree.

But reading it as an adult, it just hit different. It became a cautionary tale about codependency, people-pleasing, toxic relationships, and the dangers of self-sacrifice. The tree gave and gave until there was nothing left, while the boy kept taking and taking without considering what it was costing her. He gave zero fucks…

I thought about how easily confusing and manipulative love could be. How people can misinterpret being needed for being loved and how people will say yes, when they really mean no, because they didn’t want to disappoint someone…

Kindness and generosity are beautiful qualities but it should not have to come with such a heavy price, like sacrificing oneself. Love should have boundaries, respect, and it ought to be reciprocated. I’m learning not to be a stump just to prove how much I loved someone…

To Kill a Mockingbird

When I was eleven years old, I read To Kill a Mockingbird. It was one of those books that was able to put into writing and articulate how I was feeling.

Growing up as a minority, I was tormented by the neighborhood children on a daily basis. At an early age, I didn’t understand the reason for the hatred, but I knew that being different made me a target and it was unfair. The book helped me sort out my feelings and through Scout’s lens, I was able to understand the loss of childhood innocence, the ugliness of prejudice, systemic racism, and the hypocrisy that can exist within a community.

The book is STILL relevant to today’s society, where racism, prejudice, social inequality, and community hypocrisy still run rampant just as they did when I was a child.