On Reading, Part 1: The Addiction No One Talks About

The escapist reality of reading

It is a strange thing being absorbed into a fictional world, or a nonfiction one that is different enough from your own it may as well be fiction. I am the type of reader who, if given the time and space, will read a book cover to cover in one sitting, getting up only for a snack, as often the effort of making a full meal is a bit much. Bodily cues go out the window when I’m trapped in the right book, when it has its claws in me.

The truth is, there is no such thing as fiction that is too fictional to be unrelatable to one’s own life because you are never truly fully isolated from reality. A single sentence, character description, swell of angst, can resurface memories from my past, draw up parallels in my own life unwillingly. It is this brewing storm of plot, this back and forth between the author and I that has me often desperately delaying the final page turn. Because, as much emotion has been wrought by the newfound relationship between the words and I, it is not as if an immediate calming of the storm is the best solution. As I approach a book’s end, I find myself suddenly more willing to get up for a bathroom break, responding to texts from a week ago, even cooking a real sit down dinner, to delay the inevitable. At last, upon reaching the finale, it is often with a profound loss, a finality of a short journey—short, meaning a few hours, a few days but certainly brief compared with the duration of my life thus far—that I wish I could be immersed in again, but without the knowledge I know now. I was wrong before about the final page turn ending the storm within; it does not simply cease to exist. Even years after a book has touched my mind with its delicate ink-soaked fingers, even if I no longer recall much of the plot or the character dynamics, I am still content knowing the words at least made an impression on me in the moment and have helped shape my current self.

After the final page turn, after my mental storm has calmed slightly, it is often with a strange jolt that I regain a sense of awareness of the world around me, of the couch fabric and blanket that cradle me, the sound of an airplane passing overhead, a bark in the distance. There is the often dreaded glance at the clock, guilty over all the hours that have passed. Sometimes, the loss is so unbearable, the thrusting into reality too unpleasant, that I immediately jump into another book, leaving no time for reflection, just time for escape. It is sometimes tricky to find the next jumping point, a fear that the next story will not provide exactly what I am craving, not live up to the standards I seek.

I often ask myself why I am like this—why, when time permits, I feel such a strong desire to jump from story to story, rather than immerse myself in the world outside. It is not as if the life I lead is miserable or is a set of circumstances that I should even need to “escape” from. Often, in more contemporary stories, the characters’ lives are not even so different from my own. What is it that draws me in? Perhaps it is that in a few hours time, I can vicariously experience a life of grand fantasy adventure, watch a broken relationship mend itself, peruse the mind of the insane, feel indignant at horrors past, become a non-human entity puzzled at the peculiarities of earth’s existence. I can travel thousands of miles from my couch, educate myself in a sitting, feel personally touched by the lives of more than just the regular few I interact with in a single day. Perhaps it is not an escape. Perhaps it is a desire, a thirst for more, for the ability to live many lives over in a single body. Confined as we are in one being, constrained by our own brain, solely our own life experience, is it not noble to maximize the amount of “other” we take in, so that our brain increasingly makes space for different perspectives? A smoothie of shared lives, a trail mix, a salad? Never mind the metaphor, I am likely hungry while writing this.

It is often hard to verbalize the effect certain books have on my soul. Sometimes, it is a deep ache, a strong impression, a feeling as if my heart was a waxy orb, grooves have been carved into it. After reading a particularly impressionable book, if I cannot coherently describe the effect the book has had on me to a friend, to my partner, I feel frustrated, I feel as if I have done wrong, disrespected the words I have just taken in so keenly. It is fascinating how the written word can provoke so much, can trigger the deepest of thoughts, but often the biggest takeaways cannot be formed on one’s tongue. A touching of hearts, if possible, would be best.

In the past, when someone has confessed to me that they can’t remember when they last read a book or that “they’re just not a big reader,” my mind has typically balked. For they have no idea the treasures that lay out in the open, the experiences, the minds, the stories, that are ripe for the taking. Is it possible that there are those who do not need reading to escape, to be more than who they are? Or, perhaps I am being too narrow in the medium of escape. With great reassurance, in our modern age, you would be hard pressed to find anyone who does not escape via any of the following: literature, film and television, videos, live performances, etc. Music too deserves its place in the escapist reality. Is it only human to wish to be super human, to wish to be more than the sum of our own parts?

I acknowledge that one cannot waste entire days reading away, as enticing as that sounds. Mostly for practical reasons, of course. One must shift their mind to sustain themselves, to earn an income, to spend time with loved ones, to breathe in new air, to take in changes in the physical world. It does, however, sound like a fun retirement plan. Imagine once your physical body finds the thrill of traveling to new places to be too great a toll, why not travel from the comfort of one’s home, through the words and voices of others?

At present though, I shall conclude with the following: I dearly love books and the places they can take me, the thoughts they give me, the simultaneous nourishing and alarm they offer my soul. At the same time, I wish to maintain a better balance between the life I live inside the pages and the life outside. I hesitate to say the “real” world because at times the world we live in does not even seem real, but alas, one must call it something.

Cheers to a future Caitlin, to a future world, to circumstances that allow me to navigate the balance that I seek such that literary escape is not always so tempting.