Most people who read the blog know that I love to read. It’s my happy place, my safe haven, my calm in the chaos. When I finish a book, I immediately begin another, and I never, never feel like I’ve had enough time at the end of the day to read all of the things that I want to read.
(Truthfully, my biggest fear is to lose my eyesight, simply because I could not read. Second would of course be my hearing, because, music. I suppose I would like for this body of mine to hold out until it decides to give up.)
A funny thing happened, though, on my way through this lovely venture of anxiety that I’ve been on-I found that I can only read certain things at certain times of day.
I have said this before-going through my divorce and the aftermath, my anxiety and depression were on steroids. I know of no other way to describe it. I’ve always struggled with both, my depression the one that, truthfully, I am more comfortable with because mostly it’s like a low hum, a friend of sorts that I can’t imagine my life without. Sometimes, yes, it rears up and rips through me, but mostly not.
My anxiety, though, is a different beast. My anxiety feeds my crazy, in ways that I always hope seem sort of cute, like, oh, she has to do everything in a certain order, and she’s so organized and dedicated. I hope.
The only way that I know to explain my anxiety since the divorce is this-it’s like something snapped inside of my head. Like, if I allow myself to cry, I might cry for days. If I allow myself to feel all of the worry, I won’t be able to function in the world.
For a long while, my way of coping with this was to live life on the surface. To not feel anything at all for fear that I would fall into all of these thoughts that I didn’t have the strength to deal with. But I have lived out this process in real, slow-as-Moses time-it’s not realistic to put all of my feelings to one side, to divorce myself from the world and its problems and pretend I don’t feel anything.
I am a complete news and political junkie, and have been since college. The old me read 3 newspapers every day, listened to NPR all day long, watched CSPAN, all the things. I would read books about the Middle East and the peace process in Israel and Palestine, about the history of our country and of others, all of *the important books* and keep it all straight and orderly inside of my head.
I still feel pulled toward all of these things. But I have learned, somewhat the hard way, that I cannot handle thinking about any of these things beyond 8 o’clock at night. I cannot watch politicians in the political arena the way that I used to-I can read speeches and the State of the Union and what have you, but I cannot handle the theater of politics like I once did. I have to make space for my brain to calm down and concentrate on completely silly things before I go to sleep, or I simply feel that I’m going mad.
For me, that means only fiction at night. 80s fiction from my childhood-Sweet Valley, Baby-sitters Club, Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary. All of it makes me nothing but gleefully happy.
Why am I writing all of this? Well, I have to constantly give myself permission to become this new person, to accept the silly along with the important, to give myself a rest from all of the worry. Silly pastel paperback books are my comfort at the end of a long day, along with a long, hot bath and a glass of wine. So, this is my permission to myself, to remember that at the end of all of this, no one is going to care if I know all of the answers (in fact, they would probably rather that I didn’t) and, even if it seems the silliest waste of time, if rereading old books from my WaldenBooks days makes my head spin a little less at the end of the night, then so be it.
