When I was a child I could lose myself quite literally in a book.

I went through a novel every couple of days.

My favorite place to visit was the public library.

As I got older, I only read more. It was a comforting hobby, a place to take refuge. Now that I need that safe, soft place to land, it’s nowhere to be found.

I have a stack of books by my bed, because I can’t resist buying them still though I don’t frequent bookstores as I once did, but they are largely unread. Those I have read I did in a haphazard manner even more perplexing to the outside observer than my reading habits of old.

Will was always amazed that I could barely read the first chapter of anything before curiosity drove me to the last chapters. How could I enjoy a story if I knew how it ended?

I suppose it was the writer in me that found the author’s path to th ending as intriguing as the story itself.

I can’t focus enough to follow a whole story anymore. I can’t even remember the last fiction novel I made it through in my own unique fashion.

As my concentration waned, I substituted magazines and newspapers because a day without reading something is too foreign to me. Even this though is difficult to the point that I prefer my information in cyberbites on the web anymore. I still try to read everyday.

I hope that by abilities aren’t lost forever as so many other things have been this last year.

Sometimes I wish I could be that little girl who read her way through the Hardy Boys books in the children’s room of the public library for just a day out of the month. Be able to read for hours and not notice the time slip by.