i am an addict

I have a confession to make. I am an addict. Yes, it's true. I am ready to come out and admit it. It is time to face the truth and stop running away from it. Many people around me have known for years, yet didn't want to confront me. Rightfully so, I think now. I probably would have just denied it, became angry, and just buried myself deeper into my addiction.

I'm trying to remember how old I was when I started. It's frightening to think it goes all the way back into childhood. I can remember now, sitting in the dark in my closet. Everyone else asleep but me and my secret.

Even my co-workers have started making comments. I guess I've done well to keep my addiction hidden for so long. Well, hidden from myself perhaps. Troy has tried to confront me about it, but like any addict, I would become belligerent and change the subject.

I wonder if my Mother shares any responsibility in my addiction. After all, she's my first memory associated with it. Lying in bed as a child, my Mother's soft voice as she shared a fantasy of some land or place far away. Sisters, dark and fair, who become lost but found their way home, together. I swear every time she opened that book about Winnie-the-Pooh, I could smell the honey coming from the pages of the book. I began to crave the smell of honey. I wanted more.

Sitting in the early morning light, my purchases from last night in front of me. I am ready to admit to myself. I have a very, very serious addiction. The last inventory I took, which was about five months ago, I had in my possession 856 books. In case you didn't get that, that was EIGHT-HUNDRED FIFTY-SIX BOOKS. Yeah, and my house isn't that big. I have books everywhere. Stuffed in cabinets and drawers and closets and shelves and stacks of them EVERYWHERE. Since January, I have probably bought another 15-20 more books. By year end I could clear 900.

Perhaps it is more a compulsion than an addiction? I know that I love books. Have been passionate about them since I was a small child and my Mom introduced me to the wonderful world of books and fantasy lands and places where Evil Is Always Overcome By Good. Where good people were always rewarded in the end. Where the wicked always got their due. Listening to her read to me each night is one childhood memory that has never gone away. I may not remember the stories or how they went, but I remember her soft voice reading me to sleep each night.

As I grew older and she no longer read me to sleep at night, I began to read myself to sleep. Most of my life I have read before I fall sleep each night. I always end up doing the head-nod thing where the book slaps me in the forehead a couple of times before I finally surrender to sleep and put the book away.

I finished ALL the Bernstein Bears, Dr Seuss, and Little Golden Books.  My Aunt Nancy gave me a set of young girl detective books (before the Nancy Drew series) when I was a girl. I loved the Black Beauty and Black Stallion series. I read all the Little House On The Prairie books. I came in second place in a reading competition with another girl in 6th grade. (Which, for the record, her Mom was the teacher running the competition and I know she didn't really read all those books she said she did!)

I loved fantasy books and in my teens I dove into gothic- and Victorian-era romance. Anything with a strong woman who captured the heart of a roguish man and made him fall in love with her, THAT was MY kind of romance book.

From there I expanded into Horror. As most children do, I began with Poe, but quickly moved on to Stephen King, who became My God Of Horror; Dean Koontz, His Apprentice. Once all printed material by those authors had been read and they weren't publishing as quickly as I could read, I expanded into detective series such as James Patterson and Jonathan Kellerman. Absorbed each one of them and read them in order, one by one.

When I was younger I read of fantasy worlds and about other people living their lives. Then I grew into the adult world and found it filled with real horrors of war, torture, suffering, and death. Then, I began to question why. Trying to understand why things are the way they are. So I began with human puzzles in detective stories. Trying to understand human behavior. Why do people do what they do?

The books I am drawn to now are all spiritual, philosophical, and humanist-based. But they are also more about the inward journey than the outward. Instead of trying to understand why people do what they do, I am trying to understand why I do what I do. Once I understand that, then I may be able to better understand why others do what they do. I want to see the world around me as it truly is, yet still see the beauty beneath it all by understanding its true nature. I want to accept who I am and make peace with that. True understanding comes from within.

I've never really looked at the timeline linking my one life-long addiction, Books, to my personal developmental stages. I think it's kinda cool.

BUT! Like an addict, I'm changing the subject. It's not just about the content of the books. It's about their shape. Their weight. The musty smell the pages get when a book is old. The gentle touch of the pages as the years go by and the pages soften. The colors and textures of the covers and the method used to stitch or glue the book together. The font-type used in the book, the size and the spacing. How each author approaches a book. How chapters are titled and structured. I highlight my books when I read. I love to go back and re-read highlighted sections when I come across them again. I used to hate dog-earring a book page, but then realized, it's like a love-bite. A little mark left on the book that shows that someone loved it enough to want to return. Now, I lovingly dog-ear my book pages. Unless, it's a book of Poetry. That Is Not Meant To Be Dog-Eared.

I love everything there is to love about books. Even the books I find boring or don't finish reading. I still love them and will not throw them away. I will donate them. To throw them away, well, to me, that is like murder.

Each book I buy, I am honestly intrigued by the content I've examined. Each book I buy, I fully intend to read. There are so many books and I'm so afraid I'll miss one if I don't buy it when I find it, I won't find it again and that piece of information I sought will be lost to me forever. Wow. This is actually kinda deep free-flow writing. I bet a good psychotherapist or psychiatrist could have fun analyzing this. I'm sure my son will. LOL

So the question I ask you, dear reader, "is it an addiction or is it an obsessive compulsion?"  What do you think? Please post and let me know which one you think it is, addiction or OCD. Even if it's just a funny comment, c'mon, let me know you're reading this stuff! :)

Oh - and this is awesome. Here's the math on the books I currently own.

- Inventory in January stated 856 books
- Let's say I've read 200 of them
- That leaves 656
- If I can read 3 books/month that's roughly 218 months
Which means it will take me 18 years, reading 3 books/month to read all the books I currently own!

Troy is going to kill me.

Have a lovely day!

----------

P.S. My second biggest addiction is writing. Imagine that. But when I free-flow write, like in this blog, I learn things about myself. If you don't write, you should give it a try too.  A journal is a great place to start.  Or you could start your own private blog online.  (You can lock the blog down so no one can read it, or only certain people you authorize.)