Falling Out Of Love With The Book (It Happened To Me)

I don’t love books anymore. I’ve tried. I have been trying for years now. They don’t hold me in the same thrall anymore. Oh sure, bookshop visits are always nice. I know my place there and it’s always a good one – of importance, of belonging. I know the language and the rituals. But the book itself, it doesn’t fill me with emotion in the same way.

Not like the show does. Or the movie does. I have blamed this on my mental illness and to be sure, it might still be the case. And the movie and the show are not good for me. Not even the best of them is. But they make me feel in a way that the book does not anymore. Is that a bad thing?

Depression is an unending arid landscape of unfeeling. Anxiety is a morass of the dregs of emotion-chemicals. And I am afflicted with both. I don’t know how to manage feelings right now. But it is terrifying to not have any or to see them from a distance, like from behind a really thick, soundproof glass wall, watching as they drizzle rainbows over others and turn grey the minute my eyes touch them. The movie, the show are self-harm. The reason we do that is to feel something, to remind ourselves that we exist, to ground ourselves to this planet even as it tries to sluice us off as if we were just so much debris.

I tried with an old favorite book, a comfort read. But it was like – to borrow a Marian Keyes reference – having sex with an old love ‘just for old times sake’. The hole-ridden shroud of ‘this is not a reunion; it is a firmer end’. I felt that. Because I am not leaving this lover for a greater love but escaping (like the unlikeable character in the story), I must try harder to stay away from the show, the movie and to reconnect with the book.

I’ve done that in the past, when 24 x 7 TV programming coincided with my going to college. And it took me farther away from home than I had ever been. With new distractions, new tragedies and newer escapes. I shook myself and taught me a new discipline. No TV after dinner. Read every night, even if only for 5 minutes before sleep. The book, the last thing to do before I checked out of the day. I must do that again.

But it feels so tiring. And it’s not about love anymore. It’s the book as medicine.

~O~O~O~O~O~O~

I wrote this post in October 2024. It has lain in my Drafts all this while, testament to the debilitating power of mental illness. It felt incomplete so I couldn’t hit publish. It felt necessary to document so I couldn’t delete. It felt worthless so I didn’t hit publish. It felt overwhelming.

Somehow I found my way into 2025 and with it, has come respite for my exhausted brain and my flagging spirit. Words are kinder to me now. Books have become kind familiars again. But I need to remember how it was. Lest I forget. Lest I find myself in the darkness, away from my love. And this time I may not make it back.

Here’s to hoping I remember the love of books. I keep my Goodreads profile close.