Why do I like to read?

To power word-pukes as the one you'll find here

Cover Image: Gordimer, N. (2004). Telling tales

Why does anyone like anything? Is it for the sense of joy, pleasure, comfort, peace? Is it because there is a sense of being understood? Is it because what we like might make us belong? I don’t know. I don’t know why I like the things I do. Sometimes I wonder- are some of my likes a function of wanting to fit in. On some days, I think that if not to fit in, I must like what I like to soften the blow of standing out.

By coincidence or by choice, my mother found me my love for reading. It lets me fit in to worlds and stand out of my skin. By coincidence or by choice, my mother found me a way to freedom. I can be whatever, whoever. I can hear from the best minds and decide who is the worst among them. I can be.

I do not have a memory of reading for the first time. I remember my picture dictionary. A large, red, hardbound rectangle, so big in my hands I thought it could hold a world in it. It did. It was the first gateway for bigger world, galaxies, a universe. It told me what a first, a gate, a way, a galaxy, a universe is. That is to say, it told me what they usually mean. I am yet to find what I understand of them.

I do not remember when my books made a home in my room- I think it is when my books became my room. A room for when I don’t know how to feel, what to feel, or if I feel. A book taught me that I can feel. A smaller, green, hardbound rectangle that I would sit down with over and over, knowing that it makes me sad. Bambi. A man shot his mother. Every time I would start to read, I knew that part of the story is coming Every time I would reach that part of the story, I would be consumed by thoughts of waiting for my mom, now knowing she had been snatched away for the sport and vanity of man- at the time, I did not understand the sport and vanity of man, just the unimaginable imagined sorrow of being without my mom. A thought like that would bring fear and anger, relentless and vengeful like the ocean. Back then though, I was too tender to possess such ghastly emotions. So I would cry, not knowing that my tears tasted like the ocean.

I grew, and I learned better words, I found myself in tangles of inexplicable emotions, each with a name. I turned the pages of Bambi, pushing back those awful thoughts but never quite forgetting the feeling and the fear, forging through to see if Bambi grows happy again. I turn pages of my ‘grown up’ books now, pushing back all awful thoughts, never quite getting away from feelings and from fears. I read to see if I can find a way to grow happier.

My books grew with me. When I had to go away from home, they came along like a piece of home. They were then I remembered them, and they were there when I didn’t. I think I like reading because I must have somewhere to remind me of myself- I’ve always heard myself better in ink.