A couple of days ago, I posted a book (Hana Khan Carries On by Uzma Jalaluddin) that I had just finished on my instagram story. I started reading the novel in July and only completed it in November, that’s three months to finish a 350 pages novel. For non-readers, it might not seem like a big deal but that’s not the same for a girl who could finish two Wattpad stories in a day. It wasn’t normal for someone who once read over sixty books in a year. Something had changed terribly and I hate it.
On social media especially TikTok, I watch so many videos of people complaining about their inability to read again. They struggle to get past a few pages, unable to finish a single chapter. Some of my friends and close acquaintances have complained about the same thing. It breaks my heart because these are people I grew up reading with and exchanging books with. We used to spend hours talking about characters and adding each other’s favorite books to our never-ending TBR. And now, when they complain about struggling to read, I cannot even offer a solution because I’m also struggling.
We have replaced reading with doomscrolling on social media. I’ve become a heavy consumer of other people’s lives and sometimes, there’s nothing new on there but I still cannot bring myself to leave. I have started several books this year, about four novels, and abandoned them halfway because I couldn’t connect with the story. I had to force myself to read more than two pages without reaching for my phone. My attention span was fried.
I stopped reading and my vocabulary diminished. The quality of my thinking and conversations dropped. I no longer have the thought provoking conversations and opinions as I used to have. My mind feels closed off to other realities that exist, a privilege that reading provides. On random nights when I can’t sleep, I think about the days when I’d forget about the world around me because I had travelled to places I’d never been through words on paper. My mum would constantly come to remind me of my untouched food yet, my eyes wouldn’t leave the pages. I’m the only bookworm in my immediate family so nobody ever understood. They found it fascinating how I could finish 500-page books in two days. On my birthdays, my friends always gave me gift cards to buy books from my favorite bookstores. It was the best gift you could ever give me. To be honest, I think it still is.
For my birthday this year, I went to the bookstore with one of my best friends. I was so happy to be in there, my eyes peering over strange titles and unfamiliar names. I went for just one book but ended up getting two. Yet it made me sad. Why? I’ve been so out touch with reading that I didn’t even have a long list of books I wanted to get. That wasn’t who I was. Years ago, stepping into a bookstore meant struggling to leave behind all the books I couldn’t afford. Now, I can afford more than I could then but I didn’t even want them.
The goodnews is that all hope isn’t lost. After finishing Hana Khan Carries On, I picked up a new book, This Thing Called Love by Oreva Ode-Irisi and it feels just like old times. It’s a collection of short stories and even though I tell myself I’ll stop after one, I somehow start the next and then the next. I’ve been so happyyy. Yesterday, I checked my screen time and it was half of what it used to be. I can’t wait to finish this book and finally read the untouched novels in my shelf.
My spark is coming back and I have made the decision that it will not go dim. Instead, I will fan the flame until it becomes a big fire, even bigger than what existed before. I’ve missed reading so much and it feels so good to be back. I wonder how I survived this long without it. Never again.
Thank you for reading 🤍
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🔗 @estella.
Grace. Growth. Greatness. ✨