Literary Liberation

Writing for me is like an anchor. It's what allows the flimsy, tumultuous boat that is my mind to remain safely tethered when trying to ride out life's tempestuous storms. The problem is that sometimes - actually, exceedingly often lately - the chain of thoughts that form the essence of this belletristic ballast can be frustratingly fragile. Sometimes, I even feel as though my thought process is much like someone taking a smoke. The cigarette is the book from which I inhale every molecule of information I can manage. Most of these substances tend to remain within me, eventually accumulating to near fatal levels and slowly poisoning every inch of my mind. After a while though, a lucky little group of molecules will be exhaled again in the form of a more coherent puff of smoke. But that presents a problem too, because a puff is all that they ever are. Ephemeral and easily disintegrated. So easily disintegrated.           

Oddly enough, my love affair with the books that are the fuel for my writing isn't a wholly beneficial one either. I've spent so much time with these conveniently compacted thoughts/portals to other worlds/silhouettes of other people that I'm starting to feel that they're the only things I can be comfortable with anymore. And how couldn't I? They are my source of literally everything, allowing my mind and soul to feast on the banquet of information that they always have ready and waiting, and yet never asking for anything in return.
 
Unfortunately though, I'm starting to realize that I've started to interact with people the same way that I interact with these books. And of course that's a problem because people, unlike their silhouettes, are always infinitely more complex and demanding; this could explain why I feel I'm so closed to other people most of the time. The thing is, the whole point of reading is to discover things that you hadn't known before, right? So most of the time you automatically put yourself In the mindset that the book, i.e. the other person, is the one that has the more valuable treasure trove of information, so you don't really feel the need to present your own possibly inferior thoughts. Get what I'm saying?  
   
But I don't know, is this all really because of some misguided episode of socialization, or have I simply become a lazy, introverted egoist? To be quite honest, I'm kinda gravitating towards the latter. But whatever the reason, I know that I need to change this particular habit. Sometime. Somehow. Preferably soon, I know.