I’ve written before about how reading was my first and preferred escape from the prolonged trauma of my life for over twenty years, particularly through my teenager-hood. I was given the gift of love for books by my father and that turned all too soon into my lifeline. People are often surprised to hear I was reading at age 2, more so when I tell them I was reading literary classics like Moby Dick at about that young. While at that age my father supported my comprehension, it was only a short few years from that earliest point that I could manage on my own.

Anyway, I won’t be redundant; that post about reading as my escape can be found here. Consider this a follow-up post, perhaps, as I’ve realized something that, to me, marks a significant turning of the tides (if you’ll forgive the nautical reference to dovetail my mention of Melville’s book above).

Over Memorial Day weekend, I devoured a book, a remarkable fantasy novel set in feudal Russia that had caught my eye ages ago and that I’d finally gotten on sale at the bookstore. I’d wanted to read it for several years, and finished it in a matter of days. Happens to me a lot. I was pleased to find out at the end of the book that this was actually the first in a trilogy! (On an unrelated note – does anybody write standalone works of fantasy anymore? Feels like all fantasy novels come in series now. But I digress.) I promptly went online to order the other two books, as I hadn’t seen them in the store. The third book arrived in my mailbox first, ironically, and the second book came almost a full week after that. This was a few days ago.

Here’s where the shift happened, folks. Normally when I get new books I’m eager to read, I dive right in. (Is that another nautical reference? It might be on the cusp.) But I haven’t done so. Not yet. This series isn’t light reading, it’s a bit dense with a lot of characters to keep track of – epic fantasy usually is, and if your fantasy takes a trilogy’s worth of books to resolve, can it be anything but epic, really? I mean that in the best way. Anyway, I haven’t started reading it yet, as much as I want to. Why, you ask?

I’m currently very overwhelmed by a whole bunch of stuff going on at once — lots of end-of-year work at school, some health issues, some car issues, other random things. While I know that this stress won’t last forever, sometimes it has felt collectively like my own personal white whale. (Yes, I’m sticking with the Moby Dick theme here now – the MacMillan Dictionary defines the vocabulary term white whale as, “something that someone pursues obsessively and with little chance of success.”) I just don’t feel I can spare the mental energy to read for fun right now. As much as I’d love to escape the stress, I need to maintain presence of mind and focus on the things that need to get done before the school year ends, knowing that I’ll have plenty of time to read these books (and a bunch of others) in just a couple short weeks.

Y’all…I’m not reading to escape anymore. At least, not as a coping mechanism. Reading is no longer a survival tactic I need to employ. That realization crashed over me like a tidal wave. Funnily enough, at my last therapy session, my therapist commended me on the hard work I’ve put into therapy and healing and how much progress I’ve made. And of course I know I have made progress, but it’s hard to objectively see or feel that sometimes. This personal paradigm shift feels like a very explicit significant indicator of how far I’ve come. It feels like a big deal.

It feels like I’ve managed to finally sink a ship that’s been threatening to overtake me for ages, so that I can peacefully swim on, surviving to read another day. (I’ve always been rather more on Moby Dick’s side, in the grand scheme of things.)