Hello all,
I (M16) am dealing with a particular problem in my mind related to reading and I don’t really know how to work around it when I pick up a book. I’ve tried a few things, like sticking small, hand-written notes interpretting details and whatnot, because the idea of underlining or highlighting gives me that “nail on a chalkboard” feeling.
You see, I am fairly sure I struggle with an inability to percieve or express emotion, and oftentimes I am left emotionally blind. I bring this up because it affects with the way I read; page by page, I pick up details (if the memory loss I also was pinned with doesn’t chunk delete said important details), but a majority of the time I am unable to actually interpret these details unless otherwise prompted to (especially in classroom settings). And being somebody that loves to collect and read and learn from books, that hurts a lot. From my perspective it feels horrible to read a book and not even be able to understand the idea(s) the author is trying to express (or at least make my own interpretation based on the events in my life) and learn from them.
A lot of the time when I close a book and take that deep breath, I feel really shitty because I don’t understand what I read and I feel like this is what I get for assuming I could jump in and just see everything, and that I’ve invalidated both the book and the reading community/readers in general for buying a book written and printed to teach people important morals, and then not even being able to understand the most integral details that convey a message.
Alas, I came here to ask how things make sense in your minds; does anybody else struggle with a similar issue, and if so, how do you make sense of what you read? How should I go about this?
(P.S: I’m not sure if this is extremely important, but I like reading classics.)
by Outwatcher