When I Say I Used to Read

by anrei emed

When I say I used to read, people think I mean I scroll. They nod and mention something they saw online, or say they “read a lot on their phone.” But that’s not what I mean. I mean reading — the kind that takes you under completely, where the world falls away and the only thing that exists is the page in front of you.

Back then, I could walk into a Borders or a Barnes & Noble and disappear for hours. The smell of coffee, the quiet hum of people talking, the soft clatter of cups — it all dissolved once I opened a book. The world shrank to a small orbit between my eyes and the paper. I’d look up and realize it was dark outside, my body chilled from the effort, as if I’d been traveling through some other world. Then I’d rush across the street to Boston Market before they closed, eat a late dinner, and carry the story home with me like a lingering dream.

There are kinds of reading. There’s technical reading — the practical sort, for work, for instructions, for information. Then there’s immersive reading, when a story draws you so deep you forget where you are. And then, rarely, there’s transformative reading — the kind that doesn’t just entertain but changes you.

When I read Black Like Me, I carried its emotions for weeks. They followed me into waking life like a shadow that wouldn’t lift. Then came The Jungle, and that one hollowed me out completely. I walked around for days feeling the ache of those factory workers as if it were my own. Those books didn’t just tell stories; they left fingerprints on the soul. When I say I used to read, I mean that. The kind that rearranges something inside you.

Even studying could reach that depth sometimes. I remember once preparing for an English test — I fell into it so completely that it didn’t even feel like effort. The information just flowed through me. When I aced it, the teachers assumed I’d cheated. They made me retake the test twice, even once in front of the principal, and I still passed perfectly. That was the first time I realized that true focus isn’t about willpower. It’s about falling into alignment with the work, as if the world itself narrows to a single line of meaning.

But life has a way of scattering the mind. I became a long-haul trucker. The road stretched out ahead of me, mile after mile, until the rhythm of driving replaced the rhythm of thought. My focus broke into fragments — traffic, dispatch calls, weather reports, radio chatter. Then smartphones came, and the noise multiplied. I started filling every quiet space with something — news, music, notifications. I didn’t notice the change happening until one day I picked up Liftoff, a book about SpaceX, and realized I couldn’t stay with it. I’d read a line, and my mind would drift. The words wouldn’t stick.

That moment startled me more than I’d like to admit. It felt like losing a part of myself — not a memory, but a sense, an ability to disappear into meaning.

And maybe that loss isn’t mine alone. Maybe it’s generational. Deep reading — the kind that requires stillness and patience — is quietly dying. The new rhythm of the world doesn’t favor it. We live surrounded by motion, light, and sound. The younger generations move fast — faster than I ever did — but their attention flickers like a short circuit. They’ll read more words than any generation in history, but I wonder how many stories will ever live inside them.

There was a time when reading felt almost sacred. You could fall so far into a book that the characters’ voices became your thoughts, their struggles your own heartbeat. You’d close the final page and return to the world dazed, half-wondering how long you’d been gone. That kind of reading didn’t just entertain — it expanded you. It left you more human than before.

Now, even when I try, I find I have to fight for that silence. The phone hums. The mind flinches. The world intrudes. But I believe the old way isn’t lost — only buried.

So I’m trying again — page by page, night by night. I don’t know if I’ll ever reach that old trance again, that deep, wordless surrender to story. But I believe it’s possible. Because when I say I used to read, I don’t mean I used to turn pages. I mean I used to disappear.