I miss reading books. I miss reading books for pleasure. As a child I read a lot, so much so that my room is still filled to the brim with books. I have a bookcase, two bins and six separate piles of books collecting dust. I can honestly say that I loved reading and I feel ashamed and saddened that I stopped reading for pleasure. As I got older, I had access to other outlets besides reading; I had texting, games, TV, music and whatever I did on my laptop. All of those new and exciting opportunities seemed to overwhelm me and push reading to the side. I still read a fair amount of books during high school but it wasn’t nearly as much as my earlier years. Despite all of the different distractions I had, the biggest distraction that kept me away from reading was school.
Ironic, I know. School, the place where you’re supposed to read and be studious, killed my love of reading. It happened when I no longer had the freedom to choose what I wanted to read. I remember in the 11th grade I was forced to read "The Awakening." It was honestly one of the worst books I have ever read. A book of merely 150 pages took me a whole week to read, and this is the same person who read "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" in two days. It was like pulling teeth and I think it took me so long to finish because the more I disliked the book, the harder it became to push through. Of course. there were some books that I enjoyed, but I knew I would have never picked out myself like "Through the Arc of the Rain Forest." Admittedly, this was one of the strangest books I’ve read, but I loved every minute of it. I was glad it was assigned to me, because I would have never thought to pick it up and read it on my own.
However, the choice of books is that only way school killed my love for reading. One very big and simple reason was I just didn’t have the time anymore. My homework took hours, I was taking an hour and a half train ride home, and I still had to eat, shower and then study if I had a test or quiz. The occasional track meet also ate up some of my time; it’s amazing that I got enough sleep. I barely had time to breathe, nonetheless read a book. This only exacerbated once I got to college. I technically had more free time but it was all filled with extracurricular activities and the must-needed nap. I just couldn’t find the time to sit down and read, especially when it 50 pages worth of John Locke a night.
It kills me that I don’t read as much as I used to. Reading was my escape, it was my solace. I could travel to whatever world I wanted, as cheesy as that sounds. I wish I had more time for myself so that I could fill that space with reading. If I have one resolution for myself, its definitely to read more books, because school shouldn’t kill anyone’s love for reading and I refuse to let it keep killing mine.
