My reading life as rom com, Part 1

We fall in love, we fall out of love, we drift aimlessly, we *spoiler alert* reunite beneath fireworks…you know the drill.

I LOVE READING!!!!! And chances are, if you’re here and reading this newsletter by lil ‘ol me, you probably love reading, too. When I think of my childhood, I think of summer nights with the windows open, frogs screaming from the pond nearby, and a book propped up on my knees as I read in bed, late, late into the night. My parents, bless them, never told me to stop reading and go to sleep.

A rather romantic image of books, no? Photo by Ioann-Mark Kuznietsov on Unsplash

I’d always read voraciously, until one day, I didn’t. Early on in the pandemic, I just…stopped. Where I usually read about fifty books a year, that first year of the pandemic I think I read, like, six books? And each one felt like a slog. It felt like drinking the glass of milk your mom had left out on the kitchen table for you to drink with dinner and finding it slightly warm and just all around disappointing. I’m sure these books were just fine, even wonderful perhaps, but I can’t remember so much as their titles. I did not want to read them, but I made myself because I was a *reader* and reading was what I did. It was a core tenet of my being.

Forcing myself to read only made me dread it more. The sentences swam before my eyes and I spent less time thinking about the characters and plots and more time wondering: what is wrong with me? Who even am I if not someone who enjoys reading?

Is it me? Or one of my former ninth graders? Photo by Tony Tran on Unsplash

Turns out I’m a person. Turns out, these things ebb and flow. Turns out, there was nothing wrong with me. Maybe I’d just been filled up with a sense of, oh, I don’t know, overwhelming existential dread at the state of the world, and reading, which had once felt like a delicious escape, now felt…? The words flew out of my head and I turned on the TV instead.

Over the next two years of the pandemic, I read a little, but my heart wasn’t in it. When people asked me what books I’d enjoyed recently, I scrambled for an answer. I felt like I was back in my eighth grade math class, desperately wanting to prove myself but stumbling when called upon to provide a solution. Then I got pregnant, and so, so tired. I was sleeping sixteen hours a day and didn’t care that I wasn’t reading. Then, about halfway into my second trimester, I wasn’t so tired, and I was so overjoyed at not being so tired that I still didn’t care I wasn’t reading. I was building a human! I was hungry ALL the time! I had other things to think and dream about, namely cheeseburgers and chocolate malts!

The stuff of dreams, I tell you. Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash

And then something magical happened. I started bringing books into the tub with me again. Every evening, I’d draw myself an Epsom salt bath, fold a towel on the edge so I could easily dry my hands, and place a glass of cool water and a book within arm’s reach. I let the water hold my growing, shifting body, and I opened a book. I read slowly. Unlike earlier years, where I’d counted and recorded each book I read before the year was up, I only read. My baby was due in a couple of months and I was sure I would go through another reading dry spell (guessed correctly on that!). I knew I only had one or two books in me before the baby came, so I let that counting and tallying part of my brain chill out and I simply read. I slowed down. I relished the feel of the book in my hands, the pages beneath my fingertips, the warm water lapping against the island of my stomach, the kicking baby pushing against the edges of me. For that hour or so in the tub each evening, I savored.

I was slowly making my way through Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle when I read a sentence with a description of musk oxen in the snow that was stark and luminous. My chest constricted and warmed. I could feel the hot breath of those musk oxen breathing life into me from their world within and beyond the pages. I reread the sentence, just to feel the pleasure of the words once again. Then, because I could, I read it again. I felt as though I were coming home to myself. I was back, baby.

When I searched “reading + bath,” this photo of a clothed woman clearly not reading came up. Huh! Photo by @rw.studios on Unsplash

Then Bodie was born, and the rom com of my reading life was plunged into its sequel. More on that in next week’s letter.

But it was interesting to me how in this first romantic comedy, it wasn’t some huge, epiphanic moment that led me to run through the airport to catch my beloved books before they flew off to a new life. It was a quiet moment, alone, in bath water growing cold. A sentence about hot musk oxen breath. It was a beautiful and true moment, and I think it came to be because I let it. I had stopped putting pressure on myself to “be a reader” and, when I finally felt like it, I just read. No expectations, no lists, no reviews to write, no snappy caption and an Instagram post to prove I was a reader. Just me, my tub, my water-wrinkled toes, my library book.

In that moment, I realized that reading would always come back to me, no matter how long it had been. I didn’t need to chase it, I didn’t need to rip my heart out and prove how much I loved it. I didn’t need to act like I was in a romantic comedy with my books at all. It was more like a quiet documentary about ants or something, really. I just needed to live. Read when I felt like it, not read when I didn’t feel like it. Simple. Gentle. I needed to allow myself to live in the warm heart center that exists in the middle of an easy-going shrug.

If you have fallen in and out of love with reading, I’d love to hear about it. Please consider sharing your story in the comments, or reach out to me directly by responding to this email or direct messaging me on Instagram.

I hope you sense, by now, what an honor it is for me to have your eyes on my words and your minds and hearts on my musings and stories. Thank you for reading. And stay tuned for Part 2…