Y̶o̶u̶ I Should Read More

Today, I found myself reading. Reading with an enthusiasm that has been alien to me for a while.

Book in one hand and toothbrush in the other. Not to worry, my first and last appointment to the dentist (until ‘26) had him asking why my teeth are good despite never going to a dentist all my life until then. So, clearly multitasking isn’t a problem, especially since that hand is usually scrolling my phone while brushing.

You may be wondering what the book is about and whether it was so good that it demanded my attention mid-brush, foam gathering at the corners of my mouth.

Honestly? Not really.

It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t the best thing I’d ever read either. In high school, I used to read my schoolbooks while cooking dinner, stirring pots with one hand and underlining paragraphs with the other, and trust me, those weren’t interesting either.

This book wasn’t much different from anything I’d already seen on Criminal Minds.

And yet, I couldn’t put it down. Perhaps, because it had been so long since I last read. Even longer since I last felt emotions through words.

I watch movies. A lot of them. Crime, thrillers, Sci-Fi, and what have you.
On screen, you see people cry, laugh, burn with desire, go numb, and cycle through different shades of emotion, but you never know what’s moving beneath the surface. You don’t hear the thoughts racing behind their eyes.

Books give you that. Books let you listen.

For the record, I was reading Obsession by Debra Webb. In a movie, you wouldn’t know that in the first chapter, when Jess was riding the elevator up, beautiful, polished, and seemingly in control, her mind was splintering and nothing inside her matched the symmetry outside. Movies don’t show you disarray that quiet.

Neither would a movie show you Lori’s unfiltered NSFW thoughts while sitting in a car with Chet Harper.

In movies, you see the breeze move through someone’s hair, but there are no words for how it feels against their skin.
You see them eat, but you don’t taste what the writer lingered over.
You hear the sigh, notice the darting eyes, but the emotions underneath remain unnamed.

Those are the details you lose. And they are the ones that matter the most.

...and how I have missed them!

Watching crime shows gives you tension, edge, adrenaline. But reading this book felt like stepping inside every character at once. It was like feeling the emotions of everyone who’s ever acted in a show like Criminal Minds or Law & Order, every doubt, every worry, all layered together, intimate and exposed.

So I obsessively read Obsession while I brushed my teeth.
While I ate my breakfast.
While I waited for the water to boil.
While the microwave hummed in the background.

Because somewhere between the lines, I remembered what it feels like to read, to inhabit a story.