I recommend reading longer histories and reading them on audiobook. Those tell history in a nonlinear way, going events over and over and over from different perspectives, until you get the feeling of what it was like to live in that time. Your intuition about many rivers branching and merging is exactly what good history is written like. Once you have read some good histories, it's easy to fundamentally fall in love with all the stories and realities of the people travelling down these seemingly infinite rivers.

for example, read Adrian Goldsworthy's "Pax Romana" and "How Rome Fell" for a very entertaining and up to date view of rome at its height and decline, with hundreds of little nonlinear story details. The audiobooks are on the audiobook bay. Listen to them view a Smart Audiobook reader with auto-pause for if you fall asleep, and start listening during exercise, cleaning, cooking, and commuting.

If you start doing this, you'll start listening to about 2 histories a month. In a year you'll have a much deeper understanding of history and how it's written.

Unfortunately, audiobook is the best format I've found for overcoming the size of history texts. It really helps me with my reading difficulties and tendency to get stuck on boring passages. The history is much more engaging when someone is reading for me. Also, many passages are going to go over your head, and it may put you to sleep literally - that's also fine!

The goal is to start understanding and enjoying the small little stories that historians write. History is full of millions of them, and many of them are enjoyable!