Typa Girl

Not to be that girl or anything, but I used to carry a book with me everywhere. Sometimes more than one, just in case I finished the first one before I could return home or in case I got bored and found myself craving a different genre. A girl has to have options, after all. Usually, it was a book I had already read, something my brain had decided to hyperfixate on, and I would carry it around like a comfort blanket (only smaller and more portable and less likely to make other children at the local park pick on you.) This always garnered positive attention from adults (“Look at that, a kid not glued to videogames!” even though I technically qualify as a millennial, and they were among the last generation not to be raised entirely in the digital age) and allowed my peers to ignore me (which suited me just fine, as they petrified me.)

This was not a rare phenomenon, as it turns out; carrying a book around to make you look smart and ward off over-eager conversationalists is among the oldest introvert tricks in the book, and it was grounding for my neurodivergent brain to have something to latch onto that was not the overstimulating outside world. But it was something that became part of my brand – my style, if you will. I wore it proudly.

I don’t know when I stopped. I only know that one day I had to make a trip to the grocery store and I grabbed my wallet, my phone, and my keys… and absolutely nothing else. I think it was recent, but I can’t say for sure. I was proud, at first, of my newfound ability to “live spontaneously,” to simply walk out of the door and not worry about whether I might need something. And honestly, I did learn that it’s good to live in the moment, sometimes, that living in your head while being part of the world makes it difficult to do either.

Then, one day, I was in a bookstore – not uncommon – and I picked up a book, was hooked by the first chapter and bought it spontaneously without knowing a thing about it – less common, since I have expanded my collecting habits to extend to stickers, inks, and tarot decks. At first, it lived on my bedside table, where I like to keep a stack of books that I pretend I am reading (but really they are there to give me the illusion that I will someday have my life put-together enough to actually make the time to read). My attention span has dwindled over the years – a lack of enforced structure (and an irritating social media addiction) bringing out the worst of my ADHD symptoms to the fore. I had still read, of course, just less than I used to between work, school, and pretending to be an adult. It had been a while since I had really read something with the avidness I once had as a child who wouldn’t be caught dead without a book in her hand.

One day, I had to go pick my sister up from her job, where she worked as a barista. I figured I would be there a while, since she usually got out late, and grabbed my book, thinking I might read for a moment at the café, as I had nothing else to do (a rare occurrence.) It’s funny how we turn things into an aesthetic in our minds; what we seek, we usually find, and sometimes in our worst slumps, the only way we can convince ourselves that we can go on, that the world isn’t so bad, is by romanticizing our day-to-day lives, applying a Ghibli-like filter to our mind’s eye. I sat at my table, reading, sipping an iced latte, and feeling…

Actually, really great.

I have the view that just because one finds themselves to be alone, it doesn’t mean they have to be lonely. I have a lot of people in my life that I love, and who love me in return, but I have always placed an equal amount of value on learning to like spending time in my own company. Cafes are a perfect place for this; sipping my coffee, feeling the dryness of the paper beneath my fingers, I felt warm, content, at peace with the world and with myself.

I don’t remember what novel I was reading that day, possibly an Amor Towles novel, or a thriller by Megan Abbott. I do know that I was enjoying it though, and the next day I brought it into work, thinking I would read it on my lunch break, and the next after that. Then I was slipping it into my purse, dust jacket and all, on my way to meet with a friend, because no one likes to look like they’ve been stood up when really the other party is simply late (even though I am traditionally the one running late, no matter how early I think I am leaving.) Dropping it into my tote bag on my way out the door became a habit again, and my usual mental mantra of “wallet, phone, keys” became “wallet, phone, keys, book,” even if I was simply going to the store. It was funny how quickly I resumed that childhood habit, and how maintaining it has reminded me just how magical it is, to tuck an entire universe under your arm, to dip into it in check out lines and during lunch breaks.

It makes me hope that someone will enjoy a story of my own enough to carry it around with them.