Why do I read?
What is it about books? Why do I feel as if I'm jumping headfirst into a pit of black, sticky tar whenever I read? When I open a book I can feel the warm tar slipping over my head, claiming me, its willing captive. I can feel it wrapping around my shoulders like a hug from an old friend. It covers, consumes and absorbs me. I dissolve within the tar until I am no longer just Tessa but Alice and Harry and Aurora Rose and William. Only a scar, painfully and infrequently throbbing, dares to utter a quiet hiss of my name. Tessa.
I try to suffocate the unwanted reminder just as it suffocates me outside of the pit of tar. I beg the scar to heal and fade. I slather it with the balm of Alice and Harry and Aurora Rose and William. Then Anna and Finn and Mrs Jones and Charlie. As oft occurs, the medicine has become the affliction. I'm addicted. The more I read the more I am. The more I am the more I want to be. I am Alice and Harry and Aurora Rose and William. I am Anna and Finn and Mrs Jones and Charlie, Elizabeth, Prabu, Jane, George, Alicia, Leo, Fiona, peter, Katrina, Fyodor, Sir, Mister, Missus, Miss, Sister, Brother, Dame, Count, father, mother, brother, boyfriend, daughter, me, me, me, me, me. I'm drowning in a sea of names, of people, of histories, of stories. I'm drowning in Me. And it's my hands holding me under.
My lungs don't scream in pain but my heart does. However much it tries it cannot beat for all of Me. Time and pages are running out. Circulation slows and stops. Life-giving essences are denied. Alice and Harry and Aurora Rose and William die. They die and move on leaving Tessa behind to congeal. She's cold without their warming blanket of reassurance. She's lonely without their constant companionship. She's lost without their stated convictions that this is not all, that there is more, life is more, she is more. Relief comes in the form of her rudely unblocked vision. She looks around herself and sees that the tar is no longer there. That it was never really there at all.
And that is why I read.
