My love of reading began
with a video game. In 1998, I was laying on my floor playing Final Fantasy 6,
having just entered a town, and I was hungry for the next story beat. I
couldn’t wait to find out what happened to a character who flew off unexpectedly
and ended up half the world away. Instead, I was immediately greeted with
fights. I actually found myself frustrated that the game was asking me to play
it instead of just read. After an hour or so, I got what I wanted. I got to lay
in front of my TV and read through text box after text box explaining what was
happening to these silent, almost completely still, pixelated characters I had
grown attached to. I didn’t need flashy graphics or beautiful music to get me
invested. The words alone were enough.
As I left the town, now
knowing exactly what happened and why, it hit me. This was my experience now.
No one read this to me. No one forced me to read it or be invested. No one else
was even in the room. The words I read were mine now. The feelings I felt after
reading them were mine too. No one could take that from me. No one would have
the exact same experience I did, even if they read those same words. That was
the first time something ever felt completely mine. Let me tell you why.
Growing up, my family did
their best to involve me in everything they were doing as much as they could.
If we were having a water balloon fight, I got a hose. If I wanted to play
baseball with my friends, they helped me become the manager of the team. They always made space for me in whatever
they did however they could. But I could never escape the feeling that my
experience was usually a lesser version of what I wanted.
I was calling out
teammates’ names in the dugout when I really wanted to be running around the field
and swinging bats with them. I was spraying my family with a hose because I
couldn’t chase them around and throw balloons myself. My mom would pick me up
and dance with me to whatever song happened to be playing, and I loved it, but
I often wondered what it would feel like to be dancing with my own feet. I
don’t mention any of this out of a need for sympathy. My family was and is
wonderful and those things are simply the nature of the beast, but the one
common thread in all of these things is that my experiences of the physical
world were mediated. It was like eating butter flavored things but never being
allowed to eat butter.
Reading was different. I
was good at reading. I taught myself to read at 5 and was reading far above my
grade level all throughout elementary and middle school. I wasn’t just good at
it for someone in a wheelchair or someone with cerebral palsy. I was genuinely
good at something. So when I had that moment alone in my room, it was like a
thousand lights came on. I wasn’t experiencing a watered-down version of what
was intended. I was getting exactly what the writers hoped I would. More than
that, I made something. The thoughts and feelings I had about it were my
creation, that I made, just for me. Nothing was the same after that. I found a
part of myself and I never let go.
But maybe your thing
isn’t reading. Maybe your thing is art or music. Maybe your thing is gardening
or exercise or dancing. Maybe your thing is helping other people find theirs.
Find whatever makes you feel alive. Find whatever gives you something that’s
just for you. Find whatever makes you love yourself just a little bit more, and
hold onto it. Just don’t forget to share.
