The only non reading thing I could compare it to is the loyalty and addiction some people have for Diet Coke.
Sadly I have no appetite for sugarful calorie-less carbon juice that festers in your tooth enamel.
I just finished The Guernsey Literary and Potatoe Peel Society
it is the first time in a long time where the words on the page flew right into my mind and captured my imagination.
I was pulled through the pages in a day and a half.
The writing itself reminds me vaguely of my mother in law Elaine's penmanship.
It has this sincere extension of self that is endless.
There isn't much more I can write today
except for that I went to the doctor, it's been really hard to just explain what I need without getting emotional and upset every time.
The worst part of all is that I'm a pretty private person (that's why I have a blog where I can write things and not think about them ever again), and having to tell every single person in the doctor's office so that I can GET to a doctor has been really discouraging and makes me feel like I'm in front of a large crowd completely naked and shaking. It's embarrassing and humbling to know how raw my emotions are.
I've really got to get a hold of myself.
Which is where the books come in.
When I was younger I had a really tough time being social in large groups (I still do) I struggle between trying to blend, and trying to stand.
So, instead of choosing either
I would disappear
in the pages of any novel I could get my hands on.
I read every single nancy drew that was ever published, it got to the point where I could read one in an hour.
I went through the works and the glory in three weeks in fifth grade
and then I moved on to classics- which baffled me entirely.
Mrs. De Winter, Jane Austen, The Bronte sisters.
Ralph Ellison, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Lust for Life,
William Faulkner, Grimm's Fairy Tales, J.M. Barrie, even shakespeare began to ebb into my hands on the bus
in the hallways
at the lunch tables
under my desks.
I never fit into any real world
but every time I opened a book
another one poured out into my heart and
I felt so free like I belonged without even trying.
A free social network.
Of course, reality will catch up to you
Even e harmony costs something.
This world cost me
probably a lot of friendships.
The unknown of a page would never affect me the way
the real unknowns of my own life would.
The things I came to admire and love in characters of the novels I read
were my real disability.
It was my advantage intellectually, but socially- my fall.
Finally I had a counselor in high school take my book from me at lunch.
"You must socialize with others" she snipped,
I was horrified.
And from that time on I shunned books unless I had to read them,
and stepped off into the uncertain cruelties of this world.
I let go of the book.
I think it is safe to say the book had a better end of it, letting me go.
I met both happy times and sad ones, but most of all I lived.
The book stayed alive right next to me, waiting.
I have to say,
my happy reunion in reading
must be carefully watched
because too soon I am afraid
now
that my life I've had to work myself for in truth and reality
might dissipate
amongst the pages
once more.
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