The joy of reading

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.