I Am A Girl Who Reads

Last year, as I was in the midst of realizing that the boy I was dating had a girlfriend and was a malignant narcissist, I discovered Thought Catalog.

I discovered it because there was a post that started making the rounds of social media. It was called You Should Date An Illiterate Girl, and it made me cry. I sat at my desk with tears dripping down my cheeks, my throat so tight I couldn't breathe, holding on to that knot desperately so that I didn't sob, so that my cries remained inside and only silent tracks of saltwater tracked down my face and over my chin and onto my neck and over the knot in my throat.

It made me cry because I saw myself as the illiterate girl. I saw myself as the settler and the one settled for, as the woman that would die with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of my capacity to love.

I shared it, of course, as I am wont to do.

And later, when the boy and I communicated for the first time since my sharing, he saluted me, "Hello, girl who reads."

I was confused.

I've been thinking about that piece lately, so I read it again.

And you know what? He was right. I am the Girl Who Reads. I can differentiate between the soullessness of someone that cannot love and the desperation of someone who loves too much. I can read the lie in the hesitation of the breath. I know the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and a lifetime's worth of bitter cynicism. I have said goodbye so many times I am comfortable with it. I can close a book and look at it with only a little longing, I can go back and reread the same words with nostalgia but not regret that the story doesn't change.

I do insist that my narratives be rich, that my supporting cast be colorful, that my typeface be bold. I demand these things because life is short and without good stories and good friends and beauty it is also boring. I will not be bored. I will not live a life unfulfilled.

And I'm sure that's why he couldn't love me. And I'm sure that's why I couldn't actually love him, despite all my best efforts.

I will tell my stories. I will read and read and read until I understand and then I will tell my stories. And my narratives will be rich and my characters will be colorful because that has been my life. I will live the stories I want to tell.

And it would be nice, at the end, when I am an old woman and I am fading into the dark of my own denouement,  if someone was there to hold my hand and stroke my brow and whisper that our life was good. But I won't sacrifice my stories to have that person.

I am a girl who reads. I have words. I have rhythms and cadence and connotation. I can feel love and truth in my skin and I want nothing more than to absorb beauty into my bones. And if you can really understand that, then you won't fail me. If you can really live with knowing that my stories come first and everything else comes second, you're not too weak to love me.