Reading after escape

I used to devour books. They were a bigger part of my personality than the stunted personality I actually had. I used to read more than I talked to people. And like many oddballs, my closest relationships were entirely fictional. In hindsight, this escape went from being my get-away-car, smash in case of emergency, get out of jail free card, and evolved into my own great escape, tunnelled for months at a time, supported by bowing and cracking beams, and susceptible to cave-ins. Leaving me closed off totally from reality. With danger on either side, and running out or air fast.

Because that's what we mean, really mean, when we say ‘reading is an escape’. We’re saying life is brutal, hard, and cold. Far too much for any child to have. Childhoods aren’t inherently happy. Why any of us still glamorise them is beyond me. So we have children's books, and alphabet books, and picture books, and pop-up books, and comic books, and YA books, and colouring books. In every possible format of a book, we make for children, the same range doesn't exist for adults. Sure we have more books, grownups books, books that challenge us and make us think and feel. But do we have any with a shiny fish and a dog whose fur we can fluff? I think not.

Eventually, life foiled my escape route. Those creaking beams gave way, and the earth collapsed. I fought tooth and nail to the surface, bloody claws and muddy scars were the only souvenirs I could carry with me into the grown world. But I was met with blue skies. Walking my first steps into adulthood, I stumbled and fell more often than I walked, and in the brief moments I could stand, the urge to run seized me faster than I could fight. And I felt like I was flying. Eventually, I grew tired of running and falling, of pushing myself off the mud again and shuddering into it again. So I walked. Funny when you walk you can see the sky more clearly. Still big. Still blue. But clearer.

Which leads me to now. How do you read when you don't need to escape? What do books mean to the free? Always rebellious and contraband. Now they are here on my shelf, in my home, in my bag. Everywhere. But what am I supposed to get from them? Comfort? Joy? or do I have to be a grown-up and be challenged? does everything I read have to shape me, leaving me smarter and kinder than when I started? Can I still read children's books? The same way I still watch Pixar movies? Or do I have to read and watch Scandinavian murder mysteries wondering how there is still so much murder coming off islands with such low populations?

I read more last year than I had done for the last decade, and more still in the last three months. I’ve found whilst not an escape, it is a habit. A muscle that is barely a muscle. Beginning to fight the atrophy of the last ten years. And my tastes have changed. Short. Sweet. Poetry. Essays. Dipping in, putting it down. Snippets of someone's thoughts. I prefer these to world-building, fighting the good fight is wasted on someone with as much apathy as me. I was raised to fight, and instead, I chose to run.

I reserve the right to escape and binge on words, stuffing myself with savoury and sweet. But for now, I sit under the blue skies, miles from the caves and tunnels I built. I reserve the right to run. But I no longer am willing to fall. My scars are but thin white lines and the mud has washed off. I read. Books are not my personality, for I found thoughts and opinions in the world up here, this world with all its ugliness and people. But I see my thoughts in books now. I prescribe gentle wounds with words, and they heal fast. I see my feelings in the writers’ ancient and modern. I know that I am walking a well-trodden path.