I was hungry.
It wasn’t until a feast was laid out before me that I realized. I was not just hungry. I was starving.
I cracked open the first page of the book in front of me and began to devour the words.
Letting my mind soak in the sweet details and the tart betrayals about the characters.
My mind had been longing to eat, and I didn’t even realize it.
I was a sophomore in college, and like the rest of the world, I was stuck at home due to the pandemic.
It was around the second week of quarantine, when I realized that I needed to find something to fill my time. I was fairly involved at my college and being stripped of that schedule suddenly left me feeling bored.
I looked around my childhood bedroom and let my hands dance over the rows of books stacked in my closet.
Why did I have so many books? That question shocked me. I should have been asking: why didn’t I have more books?
I am studying English in college, but I couldn’t remember the last time I read a book to simply enjoy it. I sat down and tried to remember the last time I picked up a book by choice.
Then it hit me: high school. I hadn’t picked up a book for fun since high school. I am an English minor and I hadn’t reached for a book for entertainment in almost two years. I began to wonder why, and then it hit me.
Like a pile of books crashing to the floor, my high school english class rang throughout my memory. I had an English teacher in high school that I thought continually ripped apart whatever I wrote. The comments she would make about my writing often seemed subjective, and if I did well there was little reinforcement that what I had written was talent and not simply dumb luck. This tore at my self esteem until I thought that I was just a bad writer.
When I got to college and thought about being an English minor, I was scared. I had been such a bad writer in high school. It wasn’t until later that I realized I shouldn’t have been worried that I was a bad writer, I should have had a teacher that cared more about teaching me, than displaying intellectual dominance over a bunch of 16 year olds.
During quarantine, I read and bought more books than I should have, but I also dealt with insecurities that had plagued me since high school. Reading has become an integral part of my diet, and I will continue to relish in the juicy plots and vibrant characters.