Reading

I've never been very good at reading. I love it, but it's challenging. Even when I'm reading a book I love, I still find the words coming slowly. I appreciate them, I soak them up, but sometimes I just wish my mind would hurry up a bit so I could finish the books I start.

When I was in fourth grade I loved reading. I devoured books and my mom always told me how fast a reader I was. I think I still read at that speed. Everyone else lapped me and I am left reading slower than most.

If the book in uninteresting I will go pages without even allowing the words to get past my short-term memory. They get lost in space with the bills I haven't paid and I'm busy thinking about the bills I need to pay, or that thing you said to me last night, or what exactly Ashley meant when she said she wanted to buy the ranch dressing. Did she really want ranch or was she just saying that because she knew I wanted the ranch? Is she secretly angry at me? Is this about the time I bought the low-fat ranch?

And the pages fly by, at the same slow speed.

Even when I'm reading those books I love, books I've read over and over again, I still feel victory when I reach the last page of the chapter, or the book, and it's not all full, and there is plain, open space no longer taunting me. That space is everything I love. It is a collection of the things that make me happy and they all dance there on the faded printing press paper.