It’s been a while since I got personal - maybe a little too much so - so I figured now was as good a time as any to dip my toes back into the literary-themed personal essays sprinkled throughout my time on the internet.
I cannot remember a time that I didn’t love reading. And for just as long, I cannot remember a time, until very recently that I didn’t detest baseball. And my feelings for both stemmed from the love felt towards both by someone close to me. Or at least, close sometimes.
Confusing enough yet? Let me explain.
Growing up, I had a complicated relationship with someone in my life - let’s call them Taylor (not their real name - not even close).
Two things to know about Taylor: the love reading and the love baseball.
Two things to know about me: sometimes I love Taylor and sometimes it feels like I hate Taylor.
When I was young - honestly younger than my traumatized brain will allow me to remember - I looked to Taylor for love, for comfort, and for support. Around that time, I presume, my love of reading began. Even now, with swaths of my early life still a mystery to me, I can piece together parts of my young identity through the books I read at the time - that picture book with snakes whose story I can’t remember but whose cover I can see when I close my eyes. That storybook about horses I raced to check out from the school library every week, even as its already yellowed pages began crumbling in my hands. And later, too, from Harry Potter to Midnighters to Spy High. Reading has been a comfort, a source of adventure, an activity I can do all on my own to my introvert heart’s delight. And I know that that love comes from Taylor.
I remember, in bits and pieces, insisting that I read favorite passages to Taylor when I began to feel alienated from them, and begging them to have “silent reading time” so we could at least be in the same room together, even as I was feeling lonelier and lonelier with every moment I spent in their presence. Alcohol can do that, though younger me didn’t quite know that at the time.
And that’s where baseball comes in. Taylor loves baseball. In my mind, perhaps even more than Taylor and books, there is an unbreakable association between Taylor and baseball. And when I went to a baseball game with Taylor and saw Taylor drinking one section over, days after one of their many promises to quit, one little thing wiggled its way into that association: Taylor. Baseball. Alcohol.
And that was it. For years, I hated baseball because I hated alcohol and I hated who Taylor had become. It probably doesn’t make sense - or, if you’re reading this, I hope it doesn’t make sense. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
And then came this year. For me, this has already been a year of challenges, but also a year of me facing challenges head on where in past years I might have run. (PSA - it’s okay to run if you aren’t ready to face your traumas - it took me years and years and years before I was ready.)
So, while a different relationship in my life crumbled and threw me into a new sense of instability - friendship breakups suck - I decided to work through some of those other issues plaguing me. And one of those, generally, is that I don’t want the people who have hurt me to dictate what I can and can’t enjoy. And that is how I found myself watching a baseball game on a Sunday night, and realizing I actually did enjoy it. And I wasn’t thinking of Taylor every second of every inning. This was something I could enjoy for me, and not something I had to write-off because of something that happened over a decade ago.
And so, to Taylor, thank you. Sometimes it feels like I love, sometimes that I hate you, and often, far too often, I feel somewhere in between. But, you gave me my love of reading, and despite a circuitous journey, it’s because of you that I have a budding love of baseball.
For books, and for baseball, thank you Taylor.
(Dear readers - I’m still navigating my relationship with Taylor. It helps now that I live on my own and can create distance when I need to.)
Thanks for reading! Share below what your non-bookish loves are!
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