Autobiographical Wreading
by
Charlie Glowacki
My view of reading and writing throughout my academic career and my private life has changed almost on a yearly basis. At times I love reading and writing and can’t wait to do more of it but at other times I despise it with a passion because of the difficulties that it places upon me. Very few times have I enjoyed reading in my academic career but the times that it has been enjoyable have left me eager to read more intellectual books. When I read To Kill a Mockingbird in my eighth grade English class, I wanted more. I wanted much more. I felt like I had somehow become a smarter person after reading that book. Whenever I read a book now or write something, I try to gain something from it. Of course I read for pleasure and enjoyment, but what really keeps me coming back to books and poems year after year is how they can stimulate the brain to think in ways that television and video games cant and will never be able to.
When my father found out that his favorite series of books were being made into movies, he started reading them all over again so that he had the story fresh in his mind when he went to the movie theatre. It had been fifteen years since my father touched the Fellowship of the Ring and when I saw him reading that book for the first time I could feel that there was something special about it. He told me that I had to read The Hobbit before I could read the others so I did and I immediately fell in love with Middle Earth. Reading The Hobbit was the first time that I can remember being fully immersed into an alternate reality. It felt real in there. At the young age I was at, I was very impressionable and the words on the pages somewhat magically took control of my mind in a way that I cannot fully explain.
When I was in grade school, my peers and I were forced to read every day for about an hour before lunch in a class period that was called “Griffin Reading.” This class period turned me off from reading because I remember never being able to pay attention to my book. I couldn’t read when there were a bunch of kids around me. Most of the kids would sit and read quietly but the few that goofed off every day were enough to keep me from really getting into a groove. I was so used to reading in a quite environment that consisted only of myself. I would get in trouble for not being able to focus on my book and I blamed it on the books. I didn’t think it was my fault or anyone else’s fault; I thought it was the books fault. I wasn’t allowed to read The Lord of the Rings because my teachers knew that I had already read the books and for some reason that was a problem. Griffin reading was supposed to be a period when the student explored the literature world on his own and not with the direction of teachers, but I still could not read the books I wanted too. It was a good thing that they forced me to read other books because it broadened my horizons, but the books I chose to read were nothing compared to the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. They were juvenile. They were the types of books that got the reader nowhere.
Poetry has played a big role in my life for the past two years. When my girlfriend moved away to Illinois for half a year, I was devastated and severely depressed. For a month or so I was miserable when alone and uncomfortable when around other people. I started to write poems about my feelings and I grew to love the poems as much as I had loved this girl. It was a daily routine to write a poem. Sometimes the poems had nothing to do with my girlfriend but at the start, most of the emotion that was in the poems came from the pain that I was feeling from my loss. My audience was my girlfriend. I sent all the poems to her by mail and she loved every one of them.
Sometimes when I write the poems it is strictly for my own enjoyment. It’s not all enjoyment actually. Most of the time it is quite the struggle because the poem has to be perfect. It has to be perfect for me! Why should it be perfect for me? It doesn’t have to be because nobody else is reading it but sometimes I actually feel that I could share some of the poems that I write. They could really help people understand who I am and where I have come from. Most of my friends have no idea who Charlie Glowacki really is because I have so many walls surrounding me at all times. When I write the poems, the walls come down and all the emotions that I hide from the world spill out onto the page. It is almost like a type of therapy for me. When I go into those rooms and sit in front of a therapist who I just met, there is no chance in hell that I could ever truly open up. I can’t trust random people like I can trust a blank sheet of paper. The blank sheet of paper will always be the greatest therapy for me because it helps me identify things in my life that I really struggle with.
Reading and writing will always be a great friend of mine but since I have been here at college I have lost touch with this friend. I don’t write poems anymore and I don’t read in my spare time. I need to get back to the point I was at one year ago when every day I read something that stimulated my mind in some way. Once I get back to that point, my college life will be much less stressful. I gain so much from books and I always forget that. When push comes to shove, often times technology wins the fight for control over my mind.
