Breathless

EXCERPT

“But what does reading have to do with all of this?” he finally asked, still trying to process all that she’d told him, “I mean, not that what you’ve said hasn’t had an impact, because let me tell you, it has.  The things you’ve gone through- I can’t begin to imagine, but- ... I’m just trying to understand.  You said the books helped you to forget.  What does that even mean?”

I felt a dull pain at his words, but I pushed it away, and it’s so easy.  After years of learning to ignore the hurt, it was all too easy to do it then.  Maybe that’s the worst part of it all.  How easy it is to forget.

“The books are-” I paused at this point; unsure how to explain.  Then I started over, “When you sleep, everything is forgotten, right?  You are taken into this black abyss where you don’t have to face anything or anyone, where you don’t have to feel.  That kind of escape is so very tempting to someone like me.  But I know, as well as you, that if I were to take sleeping pills constantly, even in safe amounts, people would notice.  They would realize the depression behind the act, and put a stop to the extremely detrimental self-medication.  Because that kind of escape is dangerous, right?”

James nodded, confusion still written across his face, but crossed with a willingness to understand, a desire to comprehend the deeper meaning behind the metaphor.

“But when your escape is a book, when all you’re doing is reading, no one has any reason to worry, any reason to suspect.  And a book is better than sleep sometimes anyway.  There’s no risk of nightmarish dreams of the past, of unwanted memories springing up.  You become someone else; take their life as your own.  Your problems disappear, because they are no longer your problems.  But the thing is, with every mask you take on, with every story you slip into?  You lose a little bit of yourself.  And there’s no one to stop you, because there’s nothing wrong with reading,” my voice took on a slightly mocking edge, “The quiet girl in the back of the library, nose deep in the thick, musty pages, she’s smart, responsible, curious, and academic.  There is no reason to interrupt her and every reason to leave her alone.  And that’s what people do; they pass her by, and she’s buried her hurt so deeply that she barely feels the blow of it anymore.  And she just keeps reading.  Stripping herself clean until the skeleton of her soul is all that remains and even that is becoming fractured. And she just can’t breath, but it doesn’t matter.  Nothing matters but leaving herself, because she can’t breath and when she reads, when she’s that other person, she can breath, because she’s not me anymore-” I was sobbing by then, uncontrollable cries wracking my body, merciless.  And I couldn’t look up at him, couldn’t face the horror and disgust that I knew would cover his face. All I could think was, they’re going to leave now.  And it hurt.  It dug past everything, that one thought, and somehow reached my ripped and broken heart.  And I can feel my soul begin tear.

And it hurts.