What it Means to Have it.... BADD

I'm going to get a bit personal about my BADD constitution. It wouldn't be fair to flippantly and nonchalantly bring up a book each week - without letting one know just how deep the letters cut into my psyche.

It runs deep, and flows from long, long ago. For some reason, the gene of my reading disorder was activated at an early age. I would do anything to get a good fix. I once found a twenty dollar bill in a purse my mother no longer carried around (so it wasn't technically stealing). Instead of being an honest child, I took it to the school book fair and spent every penny.

I would read books that I wasn't quite old enough for... and still today, I have not outgrown this neurosis.

I kept books from the library so long that I couldn't find them anymore, just because I couldn't bear taking them back.

I made fun of my mother reading and crying over a book, but eventually couldn't resist taking it, and found myself doing the same thing.

I have been the object of ridicule, of being relentlessly made fun of, for keeping the company of a book... in a bar.

I've admittedly had late fines from one library totaling something around a seventy dollar range, and whole-heartedly support food drives that erase fines for a worthy (my) cause.

Today...I find myself not quite sated with one book from an author and set out to find more from ones I loved just to take care of an itch that had been created by them.

I choose a variety and cannot pledge loyalty or fealty to any one author. They are juxtaposed as lovers from: C.S. Lewis to Nietzsche, Emily Bronte to Henry Fielding, Stephen King to Henryk Sienkiewicz, Diana Gabaldon to Aphra Behn, Kahlil Gibran to Carl Sandburg, Hafiz to Toni Morrison, Louisa May Alcott to Laura Esquivel to Henry Miller to Wayne Dyer and showcased in bondage covetously on my shelves.

I bawl over a delicious book having uttered the words "the end." I can only rejoice or find any sense of happiness upon the discovery that there is more to the story - a series!

I refuse any treatment or diversion or substitute or alternate lifestyle for my affliction of running my eyes over the inked-on pages that I want more and more of.

Threatened by the reality of out-of-state moving more than once, divorce, possible poverty, and small upper body strength, only a very small percentage of the massive collection of personally owned books is ever passed on to new homes.

I am continuously reluctant to admit the books I've been reading under the sheets. Some mean so much to me, their existence is a covert one and I don't want to share them with anyone else. There are books that are easy to talk about because they don't mean that much.... Then there are those that I only share with a select few.

They say that surviving some afflictions and/or tragedies comes more swiftly by voicing the experience. If I were to become a thriver and overcome my BADD constitution by blogging here... Swift destruction of this blog would occur. All followers would probably be included in that destruction.

I thought it only fair to acquaint you with the BADD malady and any possible threats to the proximity of it.