First Time Ache (Nothing Like The First Time)

I Realised I Don’t Want New Books. I Want to Read My Favourites Again for the First Time

There’s a moment I get often. I believe most people do. I call it ‘First Time Ache’. When you long to forget something you really enjoyed, just to enjoy it again for the first time. Sure, re-reading a great book is lovely, sometimes you even get to experience new parts for the first time that way. Foreshadowing hits harder. Red herrings make you chuckle rather than gasp. But nothing hits harder than the first time. I suffer from this phenomenon so often I should get prescribed Opioids for the ache, iBOOKprofen if you will. Not just books, but video games, TV shows, movies. I’ll finger swipe my way through my entire Netflix catalog, Steam library, and bookshelf longing for a new escape, but never finding one. The actuality is that I don’t want something new, I want to experience something I know I loved again. It’s a cruel trick of being human. We’re wired to chase novelty, yet the things that make us feel most alive are, by definition, unrepeatable. You can replay, reread, rewatch, but you can’t unknow the ending. You can’t unknow the twist, the heartbreak, the joy that felt like it was just for you the first time it happened. Sometimes I feel like that is the reason I keep buying new books, games, paying my Netflix subscription. Not because I want them, but because I want to want them again. I’m chasing a rush of falling headfirst into something that shocks, surprises, ruins me, but then lovingly puts me back together. And when I can’t find it, I hover over old favourites, cursor on the “play” button, thumb on the cracked spine, wondering if maybe this time, if I squint hard enough, it’ll feel new again. It seldom does. So we crack the new spine. We load into the new pixelated world. We pop some corn and pray that this one can join the rotation. Become a new addition to the ache. A new symptom. And do you know what? Every so often, something unexpected sneaks in and hits like the first time again a sentence, a melody, a sunrise in a new world. And for a moment, the ache fades. Until the next time, at least.