However as I followed along with Nina’s journey I wondered...does having anxiety particularly social anxiety draw us to books more? Do we remember and hold on to our books as though they are living breathing friends because they ask nothing of us. Are we so attached to the novels we read and the characters in them because we feel like we have a friend in them, a friend that doesn’t require us to smile or say the right thing or be a certain way?
Typically you don’t hear the more outgoing kids talking about what they’ve read. They don’t have a book hidden in their backpack to hide behind when they don’t know where to sit at lunch, so they don’t look like “the loser” sitting by themselves.
Before I had a cell phone a book was my security blanket, if I’m reading a book no one is going to question why I’m alone. I may even manage to keep anyone from talking to me...AND I can escape.
I am not in the slightest saying that books are a bad thing or even that they are a crutch. I’m saying that watching Nina throw herself into novels, the way that I do; being so anxious that she literally cannot have another person breathing the same air as her because it is too much. I found a kindred spirit. I found a character that resembles me so scarily close.
I grew up with my family surrounding me and plenty of friends, yet my brain from the beginning has made me so anxious around people that sometimes I just want to puke. Did I say the right thing, am I wearing the right thing...wait why did I say that it really wasn’t that funny. Etc.
When I’m reading I can lose myself, I don’t have to worry about what I’m wearing, what I’m doing. I’m not me, I’m in the book, I’m on an adventure. I am safe.
To all my anxious bunnies, curl up with a good novel and lose yourself because a fifteen dollar book is cheaper than therapy...I feel like that should be the name for a bookstore: “Cheaper than therapy”.
“The Bookish Life of Nina Hill” by Abbi Waxman
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