I used to read a lot and I don't anymore, books to read have started piling up unread. That's the funny thing, you can get worse or start to struggle with things but kind of still act like you're the same as you always were and wonder why you struggle or berate yourself for it, so I still buy books, still get excited about things I want to read and then don't.

When I was a kid I pretty much read all the time, I got in trouble more than a few times for reading ahead or reading a book of my own in a lesson (because I had already read the textbook/done the work, and I wasn't interested in interaction). Reading in bed was my favourite thing, now everytime I get to bed I'm so exhausted I can't focus. And I struggle to make time for reading during the day, which is really just part of a bigger problem: I don't make time for myself. Certainly I do things, boredom relieving things or impulsive things, but with so much anxiety and worrying and a need to be distracted and detached.

I don't make time to think or to dream anymore, and I don't or can't tune out distractions, I suppose because I'm afraid to, and I can't tune out the worries and the anxiety and the painful feelings.

I'd like to meditate every day, I'd like to work through therapy worksheets, make sense of my emotional dysregulation and my thought patterns and how I actually feel. And I'd really like to read more often.

I recently bought, for a crazy cheap price, a set of five of Nick Hornby's novels. I don't know what they're like at all, they're the kind of thing I wouldn't have thought were 'me' but I'm increasingly tired with the boxes I've put myself in and the ways I've limited myself (like anyone else cares!). I am interested in reading at least About A Boy and High Fidelity, having seen the movies. And this is without even mentioning how many other books I've accumulated, wanted to read and not even started. Or the books I started reading and gave up on, not because they were difficult but because I couldn't bear re-reading the same lines over and over or getting a weird nagging doubt that I've missed a line and other disturbing mental blocks.

I am going to the Sanctuary today, my Tuesday activity. Something to talk about in another blog post, I suppose. Somebody remind me, please.