My Lost Love Of Reading

 I am changing.  I can feel it.  I think I understand what I want.  I think I am understanding what I have lost.  In my house there used to be always music.  Now, all I hear is silence and I don't know how to get the music back.  I used to have an IPod.  It was stolen when I had some work done on the house.  On there were... not songs, or rather, not just songs.  They were memories.  I feel as if when they stole the IPod, they stole the music from my house and I have not the compulsion to collect songs again.  Instead I listen to what I can hear in the silence.  The desert is quiet.  There are not as many trees.  Not the kind of trees that sway and make rustling sounds in the wind.  There is not a lot of ambient noises here.  I don't live far from an airport so right now I hear the sounds of a small plane going off somewhere.  I play this Solitaire app and on it there is a Fall tournament that has the sounds of rustling trees and the wind.  I wrap myself with a blanket because just the sound makes me chilly.  I miss things.  I miss him.  But I think I also miss myself.

I used to read.  I thought of myself as a reader.  It was something that I loved.  I read voraciously.  I read everything and anything I could get my hands on.  I loved stories.  I love the way that stories unfolded.  I would have told you that stories were my passion.  I have not been reading.  I stop myself sometimes and tell myself that I have other things to do.  I start reading a book and I can't finish it and it takes me a long time to finish.  On the books that I have read, I have noted that I am more critical in my reviews of them.  I was reading a book.  It's a children's book about a girl suffering the loss of her sister.  Her mother is depressed and her grandfather is aging.  She starts becoming a shopaholic to belong.  This leads to a whole hosts of other problems.  I got a quarter of the way through the book.  I have spent months trying to read it.  It's not a long book, it's short but I could not do it.  I have found that I have lost my love of reading and I don't know who I am now.  I am not the reader.

Can losing your husband cause all this trouble?  I am moving forward, but in what direction?  I am in the center of a circle just looking around.  There are so many changes that have happened without me even thinking about it.  When did I start wearing Skechers?  When did I start getting old?  I can see it in the mirror.  When did I start cooking all of the time?  What happened to my appetite?  Why can't I read?  I have been waking up.  I didn't even know I was sleeping.

Today I sat in my bed and I decided that if I couldn't read the book on my nightstand, then I would pick another book to read.  Maybe I need to read stupid books for a while until I can fall in love with reading again.  Today I told myself that I am still a reader.  Today I may have to find all of my favorite books and reread them until I am okay with reading again.  I may have to get Lasik surgery because my eyes are definitely going.  But I will read again!!!  Hopefully...  I am not willing to give up on being a reader yet.  I'll tell you how it goes.