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| Image credit: Photo by paulbence on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons |
"Don't you remember?" asks Mark, a little exasperated. "We had this conversation," he says as he begins to describe it to me in elaborate details: all the full sentences I said to him in response to what he said to me about some colossal ketchup accident and grocery store followup fiasco. I wish I could remember, it was probably funny.
"Sorry, honey. I just don't. I, um... I wasn't looking you in the eye when I said any of this, was I?" I'm embarrassed, because I'm fairly certain he's not making this up. I know, we both know, that the conversation took place, but that I tuned him out, my mind's auto pilot answering him automatically. And we both know what I was doing when it happened: reading.
"I get scared when you don't remember these things," Mark admits. And I know how he feels, because I've recited a thousand lost tidbits, odd facts and snippets of conversations to him over the years, little bits of time and place that were lost to his addiction, times when he wasn't present with me because his mind was occupied with the next high, or the last one.
Shortly before this conversation, in my 12 Step group, we were talking about the ways in which we partners of addicts sought to escape from reality, the ways in which we literally and figuratively ran away from our problems. And I shared that reading has always been mine. For as long as I can remember, for as long as I've known how to decipher these symbols on a page, I've used them as a way to take my mind someplace else. When I was a child, I would shut myself up in the cool of my room and read from the time I got up until late in the night. I'd forget to eat. I'd lose sleep. And when at last I did shut off the lights, I'd try to block out thoughts of whatever I'd done wrong (there was always something) by inserting myself into the books I read: putting myself on the island of the Swiss Family Robinson, in Laura Ingall's house on the prairie, in a cozy hobbit hole, on the Orient Express.
Sometimes my reading has been wonderful and beneficial; I've learned and been exposed to new ideas, experienced wonder and beauty, grown mentally, emotionally and spiritually. (Go figure, those things they say in the public service announcements for your local library really are true.) But I have to admit that sometimes, picking up a book or a magazine, or even reading a blog post. has been a way for me to escape into someone else's mind, a world someone else creates for me, while I avoid being present in the world right here around me.
Since my conversation with Mark, I've been making an effort to change my programming, to try (often with his help) to look up and shut the book or the computer when someone is talking to me. When I am able to manage it, I've noticed I'm often annoyed. I find it difficult to focus, as I'm often all too eager to leave my real life and plunge back into the familiar fantasy of someone else's words. But at least this notice I'm taking of my annoyance and impatience is, if not comfortable or natural, at least a form of presence in my real life, one I've never had before.
This post was originally published at The Second Road.
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