Beating myself up.

I'm the only one to blame for the pressure cooker to read

Books have always been my constant. My love of reading is the best thing my mother left me. My comfort. My cure. My appetite for books meant that I skipped early grades because there weren’t teachers available to walk me across the street to go to higher level reading classes when I was in kindergarten. I spent so much time in the library that they would give me a birthday cake every year. Being so much younger isn’t brilliant for friendships as the teachers were always coddling me and making sure that I was okay. So I got lost in books. Everything Lucy Maud Montgomery ever wrote. Every Babysitters Club. Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry. Number the Stars. And thousands of other books. And having a job, relationship or anything else has not dimmed my voracious appetite for literature.

It’s how I escape. It’s how I learn. It’s how I care. But, I haven’t finished a book since McNulty died in September. For most people, that’s entirely normal if you read five or six books a year. But it is how I spend 30% of my time. I usually average 150. This isn’t me bragging or throwing out crazy numbers.

I’m still dabbling in non fiction but have not read any of the hundred books next to my bed. I have turned off my counter on Goodreads. I tried YA. I tried Cazalet Chronicles. Donna Leon. I even brought out the big guns Anne of Green Gables, and I just can’t. I want her at my feet. I want her putting her paw on the book and reminding me to give her treats, and if she isn’t doing that, I just don’t want to snuggle up alone with the pages.

My best friend reminded me that I couldn’t read after my mom died and my aunt dropped off a box of bodice ripping erotica which amused me to no end but didn’t end the drought. I wish I remembered what did. It definitely wasn’t fixating on it.

It is one of those things, the more I stress about it, the less I am able to get absorbed. And the more I freak out about losing the most constant thing in my life, the less likely I am to pick up a book in case I confirm that I have lost the ability to read in a hurricane or any situation. I haven’t really written either. If I step back, I know this is textbook. I know that when I am not paying attention, I will forget and stay up all night to finish chapter after chapter.

I’ve watched so much Gray’s Anatomy and I can’t even cry to that. Tomorrow, I move into a friend’s home for ten days to watch her dog Briggs while she is at Thanksgiving. I hope McNulty will forgive me for using him as a replacement and hopefully will get my groove back. So here is to ten days of reading to Briggs while rubbing his belly and missing my girl. I am open to suggestions. And at least I wrote this. Progress.

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