Falling in Love with Romance before Falling in Love

The romance books that taught me about falling in love with books, someone, and myself.

I fell in love long before I ever fell in love.

Not with a person. Not with a place. But with stories. Specifically, romance novels.

I was maybe thirteen when I read some of my first romances in the young adult section and then later on when I found a thick mass market copy of Outlander by Diana Gabaldon at the bookstore that I had been hearing about and new that I had to try.

That book was different than any else I had ever read before. And I enjoyed it. In fact, I reveled in it.

That book was filled with magic, escapism, as well as filled with tension, yearning, heartbreak, and a combination of action and HEA I desperately wanted it turned out. It my first taste of love in its purest, most idealized form (however real or not going back in time and falling in love with a Scotsman was).

Either way, I was hooked.

Before I ever held someone’s hand, I lived a hundred first kisses through fictional characters. I didn’t know what it meant to be in love, but I knew how it should feel or at least how I wanted it one day to.

Raising my standards? Maybe.

Making me a little jaded? Perhaps.

Either way, I wanted love one day, and I wanted it like slow-burn banter that turns into late nighttime confessions. I wanted a romance that was also a best friend love story. I wanted the kind of love story in my own life that included at some point someone really seeing me for who I was and not judging it. For loving it anyone, or because of. Not the version of me that I performed with a smile walking through the halls everyday, but the silly, messy me.

And the books I was devouring was telling me it was possible. It was ok.

Romance novels became my emotional curriculum, teaching me the language of compassion and interest and so many different forms of love long before I had a chance to speak it in my actual life.