Coming-of-age is a Vantage column where staffers share their opinions on a specific beat. From in-depth analyses of TV series to miscellaneous musings in music (and everything in between), this monthly column is an avenue to spread and inspire thought-provoking ideas.
In this column, Vantage Magazine staffer Therese reflects on how the lockdown allowed her to rekindle the relationship she had with books while she was growing up.
Nearly a year ago, I came to the province amidst news of a lockdown sweeping the global population. Since I left to attend high school in Metro Manila in 2014, I rarely—if ever—stayed home for more than two weeks at a time. I grew to consider Manila home, feeling like a tourist every time I’d find myself back on La Union’s shores.
Walking into my room until eighth grade with the knowledge that I’d be here for who-knows-how long felt incredibly odd. Everything was still the way I’d left them last I came home, but this time around I could not help but observe the dusty relics of my past with a detached sort of interest. Stepping into my childhood bedroom felt like stepping into a warped reality, into a scene from memories forgotten. I might go as far as saying that it was tantamount to entering a museum of someone else’s memories, but the orange shelf crammed with books begged to differ.
Here’s the thing: I was one of those kids who easily read a thousand pages in a week. That orange bookshelf with no space left was witness to that. Being incredibly sickly and hopelessly shy as a child, I wasn’t inclined to go out, make friends, and play every afternoon; I turned to books for companionship and entertainment. Every single day, I’d lose myself in worlds that came to life in words and in whimsical stories spun so realistically that the line between fact and fiction seemed to vanish.
Once school started getting more challenging, I found myself with too little time and energy to keep up my admittedly intense reading routine. Believe me when I say that it was slightly traumatizing for me to realize that I was burnt out from too much reading—academic reading, that is.
It may sound like an exaggeration to say that I could count with both hands the number of books I’ve read for pleasure from the years 2014 to 2019, but it really isn’t. This was a frustrating pattern of resolving to read more every New Year’s, picking up a seemingly interesting book, reading maybe the first hundred pages, then getting swept up in my responsibilities and never reading another page for the rest of the year. And so the cycle would begin again.
It was only during the lockdown that I rediscovered what it was about reading I was hooked on as a child. I finally had the time and the mental space to try and get back into reading for real. Despite the initial adjustment period for this Gen Z-er with the attention span of a hamster, I soon found myself settling into a reading routine, one marginally less intense than that of my childhood. I had, after all, “real responsibilities” now.
Recent years have shaped me into the person I am now, changing me in ways that I can’t even begin to explain. By extension, you can trust that my taste in books has grown in one way or another. From marveling over the heroics of Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, and Katniss Everdeen, I now find myself reaching for more straightforward stories—poignant and powerful in their simplicity. What hasn’t changed, though, is the magic that books still seem to hold, and I have my younger self to thank for that.
Surrounded by the books I loved, hated, and shed tears over as a child, I realized how much I’d grown in six years. Now, with a growing pile of books from this tumultuous period of my life, I find myself looking forward to how much growing I still have left to do.