Please take me book, absorb me body and soul...

I can only begin to imagine how it would feel to be haunted by terrifying memories of war, to flinch at sudden sounds and be paralysed by reoccurring images. I’m familiar with the power of happy memories that bring a smile to your face at the most random of times or make you burst out laughing for no apparent reason. But I can’t begin to understand how it would feel to wake feverishly in the night at the slightest sound, to be pursued by frightful memories of the past or terrorised by images of death, disease and despair. I have enough trouble with happy memories that time has turned into cement blocks of regret, memories of emotion that can very nearly wind me as I walk down the street, memories that should in no way be significant, but are to me.
When uni classes finish and free time abounds, these memories begin to prey on me. I drag myself down into despair and allow negative thoughts and images to stampede into my brain, just because my neurons have suddenly found themselves without sufficient stimuli or indeed a reason to get up and dressed and ready for the day. I have this feeling hanging over my head like an irritating fly buzzing about my ears that there’s something I’m supposed to be doing. That I’m wasting my time, my life yadayada... It seems I function best if my brain is too busy to be concerned with itself.

Finding myself with time, I picked a random book off the bookshelf that I hadn’t got round to reading and escaped out the back door. I soon found myself so completely and utterly drawn into its pages that the prospect of finishing it scared me to death. I felt safe in this fictionalised world. I remember once reading an article that discussed how our brains categorise characters that we meet in books or on TV as our friends, perhaps a little sad, but definitely true. I had the sense that I would be ok as long as I was reading, as long as I was in this slow meandering story of other lives. I read and read and read, all day long, in the park, on the train, on my couch, in a different park. This was a world in which I didn’t have to make decisions, where I had no memories, all I had to do was float and watch it pass me by. I dreaded the time that I’d eventually have to go back out there to the world I rather not be in, the one in which I’m the main character and the plot is only halfway appealing 20% of the time. The story gave me a purpose. I worried about what I would do when I finished the book, about how I could actually go on without it.

And now here I am, out in that world again, waking, sleeping, drifting... It is an incredible paradox that I’m free to do exactly what I like, and yet I’ve never felt so unfree, mentally.