Some books don’t just find their way onto our bookshelf. They find their way into our life.

Recently, we hosted a fiction book circle where everyone was asked to bring their favourite fiction book or their current read. As I was going through a reading slump,  I didn’t have a current read to bring.

I opened my lil bookshelf, my so-called lil library, and started looking for my favourite fiction book. In the fiction compartment, my favourite book was waiting to be picked up.

Before revealing my favourite book, let’s get back to a lil flashback.

Roughly two years ago, I went through a terrible heartbreak. At that time, the love of my life suddenly decided to end things.
He told me, “I don’t wanna take this forward anymore. Let’s end it right here.”
I asked him why.
He answered “You’re too good for me. This isn’t gonna work out.”

I didn’t have the maturity to understand his decision back then. All I could think about was one question: What did I do wrong to deserve this pain?

At that point in my life, he was my everything. I thought he was the only person I could call mine. But looking back, I realise that wasn’t true.

Still, when you’re young and someone becomes your entire world, losing them feels like losing the world itself. One day, my little world disappeared, and I was left floating around without a sense of balance.

The hardest part? He wasn’t even ready to label what we had as a relationship. According to him, he had simply dated someone, and it had ended.

But for me – an old-school Gen Z with a peanut-sized brain and a heart that took everything seriously. To me it felt like a huge disrespect.

Coz the only ship I never wanted to end up in was a situationship. I always wanted a Titanicship.
Well, life taught me that Titanicship also sinks in the end. :’)

It hurt even more because it was my first relationship. And somehow, even though I never wanted it, my soup girl era began!
I started scripting what I called a slice-of-life chapter titled “Definition of a Disciplined Female Devdas.”

After a few months, the pain was increasing. I badly wanted to quit my life, but I was aware that I wasn’t strong enough to commit suicide. Coz even after knowing all the consequences it might cause, still deciding to end your life with a coward’s mask is the strongest thing to do.
I didn’t have that much courage, so my brain and I got on a mission to sketch out a well-planned way to get an accidental death. But that plan flopped terribly, and my friend caught me.

Then life, in its own strange way, started filling up my days. My college friend circle, my academics, and eventually my job kept me occupied. There was always something to do!

At that point, living wasn’t a choice I had consciously made. It was simply the only option left. So, I lived.

One random day, my friend and I went to a bookstore planning to buy The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Unfortunately, our budget had other plans! The money we had wasn’t enough to buy that one book, so instead, we decided to buy three or more books for the same price.

Sometimes, being broke has its own little blessings.

There were a few books and their titles were already familiar to me because I’d heard about them from my favourite BookTuber.

As they met the criteria for budget reads, they got into my backpack and travelled home with me.

At the time, I had another mission to accomplish: finish my Goodreads reading challenge.
So, I picked up one of the books and started reading immediately.
Two days later, I had finished it. The book was Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom.

Until that day, I didn’t realise it was going to become my favourite read.

The book basically explores heartfelt conversations between Morrie Schwartz, a dying professor and his former student, Mitch Albom revealing life’s greatest lessons about love, death, happiness, forgiveness, and meaningful human connections.

Every time Morrie spoke to Mitch, I felt as though he was speaking directly to me.

Before reading this book, I was living because I couldn’t find another way out.But after reading it, something shifted.
I started looking at living differently. Not as something I was forced to do, but as something I could choose.

It didn’t erase my heartbreak. It didn’t give me all the answers. But it helped me see that there was still a life worth living beyond the pain I was experiencing.

A few lines I carry with me
This book has countless favourite lines for me, but here are a few that have stayed with me.

“Death ends a life, not a relationship.”
“You can’t get stuck on the regrets of what should have happened.”
“Living means I can be responsive to the other person. It means I can show my emotions and my feelings. Talk to them. Feel with them…”
“Don’t let go too soon, but don’t hang on too long.”
“When you learn how to die, you learn how to live.”

Maybe I chose the book.
Or maybe, just maybe, it was the right book at the right time.
Some books entertain you. Some books teach you. And some books find you when you need them most.
For me, this was one of those books.