Reading

I used to read. Constantly. I used to read to escape my own existence, and ignore the problems that faced me.

I didn't read books about other people's problems, at least not emotional ones. I had enough of those hanging around without chasing other people's. I've never been that into catharsis, and "having a good cry" just makes me feel like a snotty wet rag, wrung out and tossed aside.

My sister had a shelf full of Lurlene McDaniel books, those depressing teen romance/dramas which feature incurable diseases (leukemia seems to be a popular one), tragedies like car crashes and other accidents, and the tragic deaths of those close to the protagonists.

I didn't get it then, and I still don't.

I don't read (and watch) to get glimpse at real life. I live it. I live every day with the same existence, watching those around me suffer from various ailments, waiting for bad news from aging family members (I dread the phone ringing early in the morning), counting the bills mounting up that are getting harder and harder for me and mine to pay.

Why the everloving fuck would I want to fill my imagination with things that I am already deluged with every day? Will that somehow mitigate the pain? It never has for me.

So when I read, I want something fantastic. I want something extraordinary, whether in the romances I do read, in the mysteries or the suspense stories I love, or in the fantasy and science fiction that brings me to other world and alien experiences.

I read to experience things that I never will.

I try to write the extraordinary and just feel inadequate. I'm not that special, though my imagination is pretty cool. Sometimes I just feel completely unable to do justice to the things that are in my head. And if I do them justice, will I ever make someone else feel free like I felt reading Bruce Coville, Mercedes Lackey, Anne McCaffrey, Elizabeth Peters, Nora Roberts, Robert Asprin, Tamora Pierce? I don't know.

I don't know that I'll ever have the courage to try. Another boring thing about me.