"Reading offers a kind of companionship that takes no one's place, but that no one can replace"

The main ingredients in my diet are chocolate and books. Whilst the former may not be the best choice for a healthy lifestyle, I think the latter more than makes up for that. Books are the healthiest thing a person can consume. And thus, on World Book Day (in the UK. Because, you know, we must be different!) I feel the need to talk about the things that have shaped my life.

My Mum read to me constantly when I was a child. And I really mean constantly. She had no choice. I'd follow her around until she got on with it. It was her own fault. The woman who introduces Gobbolino and Hairy Maclary to a child obsessed with both animals and make believe is really just asking for trouble. I'm sure I'd have discovered books without her but the attachment may not have been so strong. After all, it was she who removed all of the copies of "Goodbye Mog" from the library catalogue (we still deny all knowledge of that book. It never happened. Why did it need to? MOG LIVES!!) and handed me my first copy of Pride and Prejudice (having already brainwashed my innocent little mind with images of Colin Firth and that wet shirt...)

I was always going to be a bookworm. Not a day of my childhood went by without me escaping into the world inside my head, so to discover that someone else shared those worlds was amazing. Alice in Wonderland was, and always will be, a very firm favourite. Unsurprising for anyone who's ever spoken to me for longer than ten minutes. But I think my true love affair with books started a long time after I began reading.

When I was in my fourth year of secondary school (girls grammar - probably the most disgusting place on earth. If you ever end up with a daughter and she begs you to let her go to an all girls school - laugh in her face.) a few things happened. Not in any particular order and I'm sure I'll mention them in proper detail one day. My Dad fell ill, I met my first boyfriend, every single person in that school decided never to talk to me again. The latter was a much slower process than that. I've always been a painfully shy person and I think my absolute refusal to be anything other than anti-girly probably made the situation worse. I didn't notice anything at first, but by the end of the year I was a mess. I'd feign illness every morning (although a lot of the time I didn't need to. Stress can be a bugger to your health) and was spending more time at home than at school. When I made it there, I'd hide in the toilets or the sickroom. When the summer holidays arrived, I vowed never to step back in that building again. Of course, I had one year left and some rather important exams to sit. But on the morning of my first day back, following a rather delightful panic attack on my way to school, I turned around and went back home. That was it. I never went back. To cut this story shorter - I pretty much taught myself for a year; I passed my exams; somehow I went to college. But that year the only time I really left the house was on a Saturday afternoon to go to football.

It's pretty tough. You get stuck in a vicious circle - the longer you stay in the house, the more scared you are to leave. My head went to the most ridiculous of places. I had a case of OCD that left me sitting in the living room at 3am in tears because I'd forgotten to do this, that or the other and I was too tired to start over. This was most nights. I even had trouble talking to my family, although I don't think any of them know that. I'm not convinced I'll ever be able to tell anyone quite how horrible it all was. But that's not what this is about. I'm not feeling sorry for myself because - to be honest - I'm glad it happened. I'm still a nervous wreck sometimes but I'm a better person. I know that, had I been stronger, I'd have coped better but that was just me. People deal with things differently and it's done with now. One day I'll be able to put every single bit of it away in a box in the back of my head.

The point I'm trying to reach is this one - bar my cat, my best friends during that year were books. I was 16 and lost. But every time I opened a new cover, I found myself. Every page I turned led me down a path that took me further and further away from the bad stuff... and yet somehow brought me closer to myself. It's amazing, when you feel like you'll never fit in, to realise that there are people who think just like you. I don't mean the fictional ones (although I always relate more to them than anyone else) but the authors. These people were writing my thoughts - the ones I had nobody to tell. It was CS Lewis who said that "we read to know we are not alone". I stuck that quote on my bookshelf just before I started college and it's still there now. It's one of those things that will never go away. Books helped me find myself. They made me believe in people again. Of course, there were other influences - I can't credit my slide back into sort-of-sanity just to the written word but I doubt I'd have got very far without it.

So, that's it. Books are more important than some people will ever realise. Hearing about the possible closure of all these libraries makes me feel sick to the stomach. Perhaps not everybody has been in a situation like mine, but I'd imagine there are more people than not who have, at some time or another, needed to lose themselves in a book. To deny this safety to children and adults alike is cruel. In this country we are privileged - even those of us empty of pocket can enter a library and take a book. FOR FREE. It doesn't matter who you are, where you come from, how much money you have in your purse - there's a book for every single person in the world and we should be allowed the chance to find that book. Or all 768 of them, in my case.

It's World Book Day. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing - at some point today set aside half an hour and get lost. You'll find so much.