There's Something Unusual About Me
- Renée Coloman
- Apr 30
- 2 min read
I’m dead. But not dead. A murderer—wait: make that two, three, seven—ransacks my home. I know them. First and last names. Their ages. Physical descriptions. A spectrum of cultural backgrounds, financial instability, cracks in their mental capacity. Violence rips through me. Graphic, gory, horrific. I shudder, feel my heart bleed. Feel my brain swell. Feel that I can’t stop reading until the very end. No matter the tick-tock sound of my bedroom clock demanding lights out. Yet I’m afraid of the dark. I can’t read in the dark. I surround myself with flashlights. Batteries charged. Lights on! Another chapter, I hyperventilate, gasping at the pages of this deadly book.
It's true.
I’m an addict.
The kind of person who stacks books upon books in every room of my home. A trail of stories across two-thousand square feet. No door is closed. The expressway from author to author is a bullet train in my house, powered by my anxiety to read what’s next on the list. Thrillers. Young Adult. Historical fiction. Memoirs. Fantasy. Short stories. Zines. Middle Grade. Graphic Novels. Contemporary. Speculative. Sci-Fi. Westerns. Biographies, on and on and on. I’m hungry. 24/7. My mind gnaws and knots if I don’t feed it. Nourish it. Chop it apart with intense narratives triggering a multitude of emotional and psych responses. Complex characters are my Kryptonite. Lex Luthor creeps in the shadows of my mind.
Yes, there’s something unusual about me.
A predilection for books since childhood.
Often choosing a dashing, solo bike ride to the library rather than trekking to the nearby 7-Eleven with my elementary-school friends for an extra-large suicide Slurpee. Or skipping down the block with the neighborhood kids to an abandoned construction site in search of magical lizards, dragon nests, vampire fangs, and portals to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.
Decades have passed.
I haven’t changed.
The books stack higher and higher with each new calendar month. The adventure continues. A Dewey Decimal System (DDS) grows in my brain. Wide and deep to catalog all genres. Inclusive, always. Because I know. There are worlds, galaxies, and realms beyond the reach of our senses, and I want to be there. On the fiery wings of a Phoenix. Surviving when a protagonist is slayed by the hands of a villain. When the second book in the series promises a rebirth. When the heart wins over darkness.
I will always have my flashlights charged and ready.
That’s the kind of person I am.
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