My Crisis

All throughout my childhood days, I read.  Picture books, historical fiction, new books, old books, you name it, I've probably read it.  My mom enjoys recounting the time when I was first learning to read.  I had just graduated from my little picture readers to a chapter book.  I believe it was an abridged Little House in the Big Woods.  Anyways, so the story goes, I came up to my mom and told her that I just loved the pictures in the book, they were so beautiful.  I handed her the book and she flipped through to find these famed illustrations.  Seeing none, she became very concerned about young Marissa's mental condition.  "Marissa, there are no pictures in here!"  To which I, young Shakespeare, replied, "Oh no!  Not those kinds of pictures!  I mean the ones that the words make in my head!"

In high school, my infatuation with the printed page blossomed into a steamy, passionate affair.  I found myself hungering after my love's touch and smell.  I craved the indelible imprint my romance left on my heart and mind.  More than once, my mother discovered me crouched over a book, when I really should have been finishing my Algebra exercises.  But what is Algebra in comparison to Austen, Dickens, or Bronte?  The books were my worlds.  I could pick which world I wanted to be in that day.  I had worlds of English estates, snooty aunts, and dashing rich single men certainly in want of a wife.  I had worlds embittered with bloody wars, brother against brother, gray against blue.  I had worlds of silent, mysterious cowboys who cooked frogs, ministered justice and who stole my heart.  The characters were my friends.  I knew them, I knew what they would say, what they would do, what they liked to eat, and what they would be wearing.  I read to escape from it all.

Then, I went to college.  Where I had once read to escape, I now tried to escape from what I read.  What was once a breathtaking adventure became a dull drudgery where I promised myself I could stop after I read 50 more pages.  Now don't get me wrong!  I love the books I am reading in college.  I am able to drink deeply of the great thinkers: Aristotle, Aquinas, Dostoyevsky, Waugh, to name a few.  I quench my thirst for knowledge in their words.  But somehow the passion has died.  Reading has now become an obligation, a chore.  The only excitement I really gain now from reading my assigned books is a grade.  

Now I'm home for the summer.  No more homework assignments demanding me to read 150 pgs before Monday.  I have the freedom to read whatever I want, whenever I want.  I've been trying to do some light reading to rekindle the romance, but the zest just isn't there.  I miss my old love.  It's been replaced by work, sleep, and planning for my semester abroad in Europe.  At least I've become closer to my old acquaintance, writing.  Writing is steadily becoming my new amour.  But there is still hope that reading will find a way back into my heart.  There is always hope.