On the first day of class, my ENGLISH 240 professor, John Whittier-Ferguson, asked everyone to go around and say their majors. Halfway through the circle, it was my turn. In my best customer service projection voice I said, “Hi everyone! I’m Sarah, and I’m an English major.”
I think I’ve dreamt of saying those words my entire life. Words (no matter their arrangement) were the swing that still carried me after the tree in my front yard was cut down. Words picked me up off the tan laminate floor of my Mary Markley Residence Hall room after I realized I couldn’t be a Markley girl forever. Words proved to me that I will always come back to myself after the unimaginable loss of the girl I once was.
Words made me strive to be better. My little smiley face on the Accelerated Reader race board was going to be in first place, that’s for damn sure. I read and read and read. Just like every other burnt-out gifted kid, that’s where it started. Words were the way to get a ribbon at the end of the school year. The certificate practically had my name on it. In the beginning, a little bit of friendly competition became a brand new open door that I didn’t know existed. Thus began my very first English class hyperfixation: “Titanic.” It was a win-win! Not only could I explore the sunken ship as if I was 12,000 feet under with it, but I could also win while I learned more about the place of Rose and Jack’s love story.
In elementary school, words were the only thing that kept me from succumbing to the misery that engulfed my tiny blue house on 5th Street. Through leaky ceilings and broken doors, books were the glass bowl that never became full of rainwater. They were reliable in a way that few other things were. I could read success stories about Dolly Parton’s rise to music legend from a poor household in the Tennessee mountains. There was hope in this incredible, extraordinary way to leave my unfortunate uncontrollable life to one that had a lesson and a happy ending. Reading wasn’t just about words on a page to me, it was proof that my life could be better. I would get there, this magical destination where I’ve created a safe home for myself.
Middle school came, bringing hormones so intense I couldn’t even look at anything that reminded me of being a child. Everyone affirmed so adamantly I was nothing more than a little girl, and I couldn’t bear to hear it anymore. To be the grown woman I wasn’t, I stopped reading. I only read what was required of me from school, closing myself off to the worlds I used to find refuge in. The unfortunate truth was that I still really loved to read, and there was no hiding that. I still dominated the conversation in English class. I couldn’t help it. No matter how hard I tried not to answer — to quiet my passions down — whenever the lingering silence came, my hand went up as if it had a mind of its own.
Even in small talk I could never deny the annoying power that language still had over me. When people asked me what my hobbies were, I couldn’t really say I spent most of my time watching YouTube and scrolling through stan Twitter. As a reflex, I said I loved to read. Even though I hadn’t read for fun in years.
Before I knew it, I was freshly 15 and forced to be in that tiny blue house all the time. As a never-doing-nothing extrovert, the boredom of being home-bound consumed me. I was forced to return to the hobby that I always told everyone I loved doing. It was time my small talk space filler filled real space in my life again. I began my reintroduction to reading with Anna K. by Jenny Lee. This “Gossip Girl”-esque teen romance based on Tolstoy was everything I needed to remind myself of how words allowed me to leave reality behind. I hadn’t felt this blissful escape since, well, the last time I read about four years ago.
From then on, I read fairly consistently. My childhood fire turned into an eternal flame, able to withstand anything. I found both solace and community through reading, a desperate craving I didn’t know existed.
Until I was subjected to young love.
This love took up every space that had any space to be filled. I didn’t need to read because I loved this person so much that they were my hobby. Why leave reality behind when it was finally sickly sweet to live in? Free time? Let me call them. Need an escape? Let me call them. Eventually, the calls weren’t needed. I was already with them. There was no time to even think about reading. I was either sleeping or working or with them.
Then, all of a sudden I had a lot of free time.
Poems picked me up off of my bathroom floor. The love lost had been hanging over me like a dagger tied to the ceiling with floss. On the brink of snapping. It was the very thing I abandoned for someone else that allowed me to realize there truly is no one else except for myself. Trista Mateer wrote, “In this life, you’re going to love like pulling teeth, / (one after another) / and that’s okay. / I promise it’s all right.” Her words gave me the strength to stand, take the blade down and use the floss to polish my teeth.
In the same way that losing teeth felt world-ending to me at 5 years old, losing love felt world-ending at 17. Words brought me back to life. Mary Oliver, Wendy Cope and Seamus Heaney made me turn my face towards the sun and really feel it. They made me bask in it and beg the ozone layer to diminish just a little more so that I could feel the sun’s heat more intensely.
How could I not spend my life reading more of their words? The beauty of language and its power will always illuminate the most precious things in my life and heal the most painful ones. Being able to study the only constant thing in my turbulent life is straight out of a fairy tale.
But, John, I have something to confess.
I am not an English major.
Daily Arts Writer Sarah Patterson can be reached at sarahpat@umich.edu.
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