Romance novels were my first true love.
And I’m not talking about the mature, healthy love you find in adulthood with your life partner. Not the love of compromise and growth and challenge and acceptance and the kind of easy comfort you know will last forever. Not the love we’re told we will eventually learn to want, to enjoy, to cherish, to settle for.
I’m talking about stupid love. Can’t eat, can’t sleep, stop talk to your friends, change your entire personality to make it last just a little bit longer love. The love that sends electricity through your veins when he walks into a room, that keeps you chained to the bed because as long as it works in the dark, then nothing else matters. The love we’re supposed to grow out of wanting, because the healthier version truly is supposedly much better.
But some of us never do.
—
The book that started it all for me was Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. I now know this book and its innumerable sequels to be a genuine classic, one of the first modern romance novels from which so many themes, plot points, and classic lines readers are familiar with today have originated. Even now I can tell you whether the author of the book I’m reading has read and loved Outlander, or at least absorbed it by osmosis, based on certain plot points or lines of dialogue. (The marriage of convenience trope is still alive and well, and Sarah J. Maas readers might be familiar with, “Does it ever stop, Claire? The wanting?”)
I didn’t know any of that at the time. An introverted middle schooler with an indiscriminate love of all books and far too much time on her hands, I simply pulled it from my stepmother’s decorative bookshelf because it seemed interesting and grown up, and I had nothing else to do.
It was a hardcover, likely a first edition, with a dust jacket design that looked antiquated even then. A decorative clock sat on a wooden surface, its face shattered, pieces of glass still floating in the air around it. In front of the clock, the hilt of a dagger, over which was draped a string of pearls. In the background, a bright red and black plaid tartan. These objects were obviously metaphorical or foreshadowing or both, and the middle school English nerd in me flagged such symbolism as the clear mark of literary excellence.
Outlander is well over 500 pages, and I didn’t have nearly the patience to read it front-to-back the first time. I flipped through it, eyes glazing past the large chunks of exposition, historical context, and landscape descriptions, looking for the pages of dialogue that signaled action and plot. I roughly pieced together the story - a woman visiting Scotland accidentally travels back in time, is taken in by a group of highlanders, is conveniently forced to marry the young and handsome clansman she’s being flirting with, falls in love with said hero, and faces the challenges of both 18th century and married life alongside him.
I read and reread the love scenes, so much more detailed than the “fade to black” chapters of the YA novels I devoured or the romantic comedies I watched with my friends. (I didn’t yet know what to do about that tightening below my stomach that happened when I read these parts, but I knew I liked it, and I wanted more of it.) I dogeared the moments of emotional climax - Jamie’s explosion of fear and anger after rescuing his new wife from an English prison, Claire deciding to stay in the past and abandon the life she had with her first husband, the two of them battling the trauma of Jamie’s assault to come out the other side, stronger, together. Even more than the sex, which felt so adult and forbidden at the time, the wild and poignant emotion of these moments were so much brighter than I had experienced in my own young and sheltered life, and feeling them even second hand was a high I couldn’t get enough of.
I can’t tell you how many times I read Outlander, or exactly when the story sunk its claws into me. Each read was slower and more detailed, and I absorbed more and more of the context even as Claire and Jamie’s relationship began to imprint itself on my youthful understanding of love. It was passionate and dramatic, certainly, but also awkward and uncomfortable. There was pain and violence and trauma, all soothed - with no small effort - by unquestioning and unconditional love. They hurt each other and healed each other. It was a fairy tale, but one with enough mess that made it feel almost realistic, almost attainable. With no romantic prospects of my own to speak of, I was happy to let this story stand in the place of personal experience and embody the kind of love and life I wanted for myself, someday.
The copy I got my hands on included a small excerpt of the sequel, Dragonfly in Amber, at the very back, which I read and reread along with the rest of it. With no way to track down this second installment and absolutely no intention of asking anyone about it, I assumed this brief snippet of the characters’ future was all I would ever get, and it was equal parts comforting and agonizing to hold that story in my heart without a true sense of finality.
At some point - likely around the advent of internet search engines, at last a way to find information without having an uncomfortable conversation with a human adult - I learned that there were not one but four sequels, all of which were available for purchase at my local Barnes & Noble. By then, the cover art for all of the books had changed, each a different, vibrant primary color with gold lettering and a simple image that reflected that piece of the story - a crown, a goblet, a tartan pin, a tree, a key. Lord only knows where I got the money or how I bought the books without my parents finding out, but I slowly but surely built up my Gabaldon collection and dove even further into the world and love of Claire and Jamie Fraser.
–
Eventually, of course, I ran out of Outlanders to read and began to seek out any romance novel I could get my hands on. While none of them stacked up to the scale and grandeur I had found in my imagined Scottish highlands, I found the shorter works of Sandra Brown and Nora Roberts got the job done just fine.
At the time, my grandmother had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in her living room that were filled to the brim with novels. Once I realized that every one of the hundreds of books I had ignored for so many years were romance, Grandma immediately became my unwitting smut dealer. I started by pulling one off the shelf while no one was looking, stashing it in one of the guest bedrooms down the hall, and sneaking away as often as I could to return to it and read a few chapters at a time. Eventually I got bolder and began slipping two or three into the backseat of our car while everyone was in the backyard, devouring them in secret at home, then reversing the heist to return the books and grab some more the next time we made a visit.
(I am absolutely certain at this point that my mom, if not the entire family, knew exactly what I was doing, and I am forever grateful that they let it continue rather than broach a conversation that would have caused me to immediately burst into flames and burn alive of embarrassment.)
As I progressed through high school and obtained both my own funds and means of transportation, my reading habits became less covert, but no less voracious. I read about enemies who became lovers, fake relationships that became real, and jaded career women who became open to the possibility of love. I read about small towns on the Chesapeake, Irish castles steeped in magic and history, and beach resorts run by several generations of the same family. The stories were comfortingly predictable and the characters flawed but truly good in the ways that mattered.
As silly as it may feel now to admit, romance novels became the building blocks of my perspective, not just on love, but on life, the world, and my place in it. I was deeply optimistic, doggedly determined to view people and the world in the best light possible. Already uncertain about my views on religion, I held tightly to the idea of faith, believing in things that could not be seen or understood, and trusting in the eternal wisdom of fate and the universe.
I told my British Literature teacher that my long-term career goal was to move to a small town on the Chesapeake Bay and open a store that only sold books with happy endings. I took strength from his exasperated eye-roll, knowing the existence of such cynicism only confirmed the essential nature of my stubborn belief in magic. I enrolled at one of the country’s most prestigious colleges to major in creative writing (God bless my parents’ own blind faith), placing my wildest dreams far above any kind of pragmatism, even when it came to my education and career. I just knew that a great life was waiting for me out there, filled with deep emotion and the kind of pain that only exists to be swept away by love and joy. And in that small town waited a man who would find me, challenge me, heal me, and love me until the end of time.
This unfailing faith in the future also acted as an excuse to disengage from the present. I didn’t need to put myself out there or make connections with other people, because eventually, they would come to me. It was fine to only pine after the boys I liked from afar, because the right boy would see me by the wall and pull me onto the dance floor. And of course, none of this would happen until after I sorted out my hair, my glasses, my sense of fashion, and my overweight body anyways.
The magic was coming for me. I just had to be patient.
–
Perhaps ironically, what started to change it all is that a boy eventually did pull me onto the dance floor. And for a while, it was magic. He left the girlfriend who didn’t understand him the way I did and pushed me up against the wall and kissed me deeply. He sent flirty messages that shot electricity through my veins and showed me what being touched in the dark could feel like. He told me I was beautiful in a way that made me believe it, told me I deserved love and romance and good sex in a way that made me believe it. Until he didn’t.
I probably put too much blame on this one man who had the unwitting misfortune of ushering me out of the dim and misty world of magic and into the harsh Khol’s dressing-room lights of reality. That experience proved that some pain doesn’t exist only to be washed away by love; some pain is just pain. How could he have known that I didn’t already know that? Does it matter whether or not he did? In any case, it was a lesson learned quickly and well.
The agony of my first relationship’s chaotic and jagged conclusion led me to my first therapist’s chair. As optimistic and romantic as I might have been, I was equally logical and analytical, and I fought tooth and nail to understand (and thereby, one would assume, alleviate) the hurt that sat on my chest at night and pressed down until I couldn’t breathe. I Googled symptoms, scheduled appointments, researched medications, and read self-help books. I reflected on past experiences through the lens of mental health and had epiphanies about my own identity and experiences. If love wasn’t going to pull me out of this pit, then the only other viable option was to quite simply science the shit out of it.
In a similar vein, I took a more pragmatic approach to dating during this time. Living my life in an unassuming and covertly charming way, hoping someone would take notice and pull me forcefully into a relationship, just didn’t seem to be working out. (Besides, once you figure out what that thing in that spot is and what it feels like when someone does the stuff to it, your patience with the passive search for love starts to dwindle.) Luckily, this was around the time online dating was sliding towards the acceptable side of the social zeitgeist, and I took full advantage. I paid my Match.com dues and went on so many first dates that bartenders started to recognize me. Where waiting and wishing had failed me, hard work and perseverance would conquer the day.
And while “conquer” may not be the right word, the “quantity over quality” approach to relationships certainly - erm - got the job done. Match became Tinder became Bumble, and the next few years were an expedited crash course in mediocre relationships. Some were hilariously tragic one-night-only specials, some were desperately high hopes dashed by miscommunication and immaturity, and at least one was a genuine friendship doomed by really good dick and the misplaced emotional expectations that come along with it. It was all somehow both better and worse than I had imagined it would be.
What I didn’t do during these years of relentless goal-setting and pragmatic strategizing was read. Having leapt into a career in education (a well-timed financial crisis gave me the excuse I needed not to pursue an unlikely and unstable career in the literary world), every moment not spent counting calories or serial dating were poured into my work. The space in my mind and heart where my imagination used to live was taken up by hard work and intellectual growth. Who needed an imaginary world anyways, when I was out there soaking up the real world and racking up life experiences like video game points, leveling up every chance I got.
What exactly was I soaking up? And what was I working so hard to obtain? An impressive career, a husband and family, a brain that behaved like it was supposed to. Everything I was told I needed to achieve happiness and fulfillment as I inched closer to the second half of my life. And I was doing it! I had successfully switched tracks, and the train was chugging along. But the destination didn’t seem to be getting any closer, and whoever had planned the route those tracks were laid on, it certainly wasn’t me.
–
In a plot twist that will shock exactly no one, these things did not, in fact, lead to absolute success and fulfillment. But as with everything that happens in our lives, good or bad, they did lead me to what was next.
Continuing a theme I wasn’t prepared to look too closely at just yet, the next phase of my life was brought about by the abrupt and painful end of a relationship I had thrown my whole heart into, this time with a job at a school I genuinely loved. I took the next job quickly and half-heartedly, a rebound role I lazily hate-fucked until I realized it was simply a less exciting version of the one I missed.
Though I had long since lost my faith in faith itself, it would be the height of willful ignorance to deny destiny’s hand in all that happened next. I declared my intention to retreat into a remote work position and build a life to my exact specifications - and the universe countered with a tornado that sent our entire city running for cover, and a global pandemic that kept us there for months.
There is a population of people – fervent introverts who were lucky enough not to be touched by the ravages of the coronavirus - who may be too ashamed to tell you that those months of quarantine were among the best of our lives. Freed from the everyday stresses of my physical workspace, the guilt-laden moral pressure to attend the gym on a regular basis, and the default assumption that a heavy percentage of my time should be spent at bars and coffee shops searching for the man who would complete me, I was gifted the time and space to reconsider where I was going and why (if) I even wanted to go there.
The first thing I noticed was that, aside from the obnoxious and overwhelming desire to hump anything that moved for the two days every month that my body demanded a sperm deposit, I did not miss dating in the least. I did not miss the awkward conversations, the repetitive interrogations, the clumsy innuendos, the “so what are you looking for?”s and the “why are you still single?”s and the “do you happen to have a picture of your whole body?”s. I certainly didn’t miss the sub-par sex, nor the super-par sex that inevitably led to swift and brutal emotional disappointment.
I was finally forced to acknowledge how let down I truly was by the entire endeavor, and if the alternative was spending my life in my pajamas drinking boxed wine and binging The West Wing with my dog curled up at my feet, then was that really any kind of punishment at all?
Of course, after Barlet returned to his farm in New Hampshire and the Bota Box was empty, I joined the ranks of upper middle class millennial women jonesing from the sudden withdrawal of overwork and delved into the world of hobbies. I didn’t learn the art of sourdough, but I did knit a scarf, paint several of my walls, and buy a used keyboard off Craigslist. Most importantly, I signed up for the Book of the Month club and set an intention to begin reading again for pleasure - a hobby I vaguely remembered to have been enjoyable in a former life.
Along with my mother and a group of similarly intellectually curious friends, I reacquainted myself with the written word. I rarely touched novels - and certainly no romances, heaven forbid - as I wanted to be challenged, to learn something new and interesting that might help me to evolve into a better version of myself. Every book had a purpose, and a successful reading experience was one in which some piece of the work embedded itself into my ever-refining identity.
Glennon Doyle taught me to trust my Knowing. CJ Hauser taught me to love my own story. Jess Zimermman taught me about the joy of being a monster. Tara Mohr taught me how to make big, fast, and true decisions. Lulu Miller taught me to break the mold inside which my world view had developed. Samantha Irby taught me the intellectual value of laughter. Laura Thomas taught me to eat whatever the fuck I want.
Over time, these books began replacing the voices in my head that had been telling me where to go, regardless of whether I cared about the destination or would have any kind of fun getting there. I quit my job - again. I threw away my bathroom scale. I found a new therapist and started taking Lexapro. I redownloaded the Duolingo app and spent a week exploring Barcelona on my own. I founded a consulting company that almost immediately went down in a blaze of glory. I packed up my life and moved to a city on the Chesapeake. I signed up for an improv class. I began to write again.
Piece by piece, these women and their words started to rebuild a version of me I recognized, a version I not only admired but truly enjoyed. I was on my way back to myself.
–
Around the same time I fled to the bay, a dear friend of mine made a big move of her own, enrolling in a graduate program at the University of Edinburgh. Not one to pass up free lodgings in a beautiful city, I immediately planned a trip to visit her the following spring.
As the trip grew closer, I began looking for ways to prepare for a week in Scotland. Since there was no new language to learn, I instead bought a bottle of scotch and searched the internet for books, TV shows, and movies set in Scotland. It felt both jarring and yet somehow inevitable when a certain television adaptation I had been ignoring for the past several years popped up on Netflix - Outlander.
I clicked Play without a second thought. In the name of travel research, I assured myself. I’ll only watch a few episodes to get excited about the trip. The way an alcoholic rationalizes a celebratory glass of champagne after twenty years of sobriety. As if I didn’t know exactly what was about to happen.
I’ve always suspected that I suffer from aphantasia, the inability to create clear mental images of things, particularly human faces. It’s why I honestly could not describe to you in words what any of my friends or family look like, and why one of my greatest fears is being asked by a police officer to describe a murder suspect I had spoken to at a bar the night before the crime. It’s also why movie and television adaptations of books will always feel just a little bit wrong to me - because the characters in my head are not contained by physical characteristics, but rather as amorphous blobs of feelings, attitudes, and general vibes.
All of this is to say that, while I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the Outlander show, I was constantly distracted by the discrepancies between what I saw on the screen and what I had imagined - in whatever strange, undefined way I had imagined it - when I first read the series, all those years ago. And so, again purely in the name of travel preparations, I walked to the public library and checked out the first book in the series. The cover had again changed, now including a still of the actors who portrayed Claire and Jamie in the show, but I brushed aside that small annoyance, settled into the couch, and cracked it open.
I wish there was some other way to describe what happened, something less on-the-nose and utterly cliche, other than to say that I traveled back in time. Emotions I had not felt since those nights spent staying up late reading in my childhood bed awakened like long-neglected muscles. Memories of plot points glowed dimly in the back of my mind - Something bad is about to happen. This character is important. He’s lying. I found myself mouthing conversations as I read them like a crazed fan singing along at a pop concert. My stomach clenched in moments of tension, and tears rolled in moments of reconciliation. My heart woke up.
Not unlike the way you find yourself binging on sugar after a single taste in the midst of a diet that had convinced your body it was dying, my brain latched onto this story once again, starved as it had been for anything resembling raw and powerful emotions. I learned that Diana Gabaldon had not stopped writing the Outlander series when I stopped reading it, but in fact was still writing it, and the five-book series had since expanded to nine.
After revisiting the old and devouring the new, I branched out to the fantasy romance series that were dominating top seller lists and Instagram hashtags in recent years. I was delighted to learn that, while the classic tropes were still alive and well, modern romance had evolved along with society, highlighting consent and female pleasure in a way that made me proud to be a millennial. The sex scenes themselves were also bolder and more detailed, necessitating the purchase of a higher-powered vibrator to get me through each new series without dying of arousal. Scottish moors and ripped bodices had become dragon war colleges and skin-tight leathers, but it was magic all the same, and I felt a little bit like maybe I was coming home.
–
The problem was, while obsessive and all-consuming reading bouts were all well and good for a high school student with no life responsibilities beyond calculus homework, my addictive tendencies were more of an obstacle for a work-from-home adult living by herself in a city with no friends or family. I stayed up until 7:00 in the morning, crouched by the outlet on my bedroom wall to keep my kindle charged while I read. I forgot to eat meals, or (more importantly) feed them to the unfortunate dog who relies on me to keep him alive. I canceled meetings for days at a time, unable to remove myself emotionally from the story at hand, even when I wasn’t actively reading. When the book was done, I turned to fan art, social media fan accounts, and fan fiction sites to keep the feeling going. And while I was thoroughly enjoying my journey back into the world of romance, that enjoyment was weighed down by a thick blanket of shame.
What on earth are you doing? You should have gone to bed earlier. You should be at the gym right now. You should be scheduling more meetings. You should have eaten breakfast. You should be going on dates with real human men. You should be making friends. You should read something more intellectual. You should adjust your medications.
Google was no help. While those addicted to alcohol and drugs were offered scientific explanations and recovery resources, addiction to romance novels was portrayed as a fun personality quirk, something to embrace and enjoy rather than disdain. Lighten up, why don’t you? But that couldn’t be right. I felt out of control. The pleasure I got from those books was too intense, too all-encompassing, too isolating. A life devouring romance was too far outside of the life I had envisioned for myself, and the course needed to be corrected.
I decided it was a symptom of my newly diagnosed ADHD. The dopamine I got from reading these stories satisfied my natural shortage and left me wanting more. The more I read, the more I needed. It was a downward spiral, confirmed by science, that I could learn more about and eventually stop. I could get back on track.
I felt pity for the people who ran those social media accounts and fan fiction pages, dedicating their entire lives to the reliving of a single story, replacing real world experiences with fictional relationships and unrealistic characters. They were certainly unwell and unfulfilled. But there was a soft, quiet voice, in the back of my mind, wondering if they weren’t also just a little bit free.
–
Every once in a while, there will be an experience or a place or a moment that… try as I might, I can’t find the right term for it. Takes my breath away? Speaks to my soul? Brings me deep joy? None of those feel right, or enough. But I think you know what I’m talking about. Those moments when you know you’re where your supposed to be, experiencing something that pushes you toward a better, more joyful, truer version of your own life.
Sitting on a hill overlooking the Parthenon and the Nashville skyline on a summer night. Seeing GooGoo Dolls perform live decades after their songs dominated the radio. Sailing across the inner harbor in Baltimore. Sitting in front of a bonfire next to a boy I like, who I think likes me too. I don’t always recognize these moments when I have them, but I always remember them, and how they made me feel. Like I’ve done something deeply right, like this is what life is all about, like true peace.
My trip to Scotland was ten days straight of such perfect moments. I walked up and down the Royal Mile of Edinburgh, listening to the bagpipes and sipping on scotch in a misting rain that was somehow more romantic than dampening. I sat on the back porch of a cottage in the highlands and watched the northern lights. I floated across Loch Katrine and saw the mountains that inspired Schubert to write “Ave Maria.” And though I never would have admitted it out loud, the ghosts and Claire and Jamie Fraser were with me throughout. Even though I’d never set foot in Scotland before, my heart recognized it as the place I learned what love could be, for those brave enough to dream.
I had spent the last few months wondering if romantic notions had a place in my life, and the universe responded by grabbing my soul by the balls and yelling STOP. LOOK. THIS. It felt like relief, like permission, like maybe magic and reality weren’t so irreconcilable after all. I all but heard the turn of the key, and a part of myself I had locked away for twenty years stepped back into the sun, yawning joyfully and stretching her arms towards the sky. She took a deep breath, and my shoulders dropped.
For the first time in my adult life, I ended a trip not fully ready to return home, the allure of the Scottish countryside stronger - though just barely - than that of my couch back in Baltimore. But I fought the jet lag and ordered the groceries and walked the dog, glaring resentfully at the skyscraper that wasn’t a castle and the bay that wasn’t a loch. But it’s been a few months now, and I can still hear the bagpipes, see the misty gray skies, feel that shimmering warmth somewhere deep in my chest.
I don’t know what all of this means for me moving forward. I don’t yet know how to let myself indulge in multi-hour flights of fancy while acknowledging those impulses as a symptom of neurodivergence. I don’t know how to be an independent, self-assured woman and admit that I long for a handsome man to sweep me off my feet. I don’t know how to keep one foot in the world my imagination creates and the other in this vibrant, challenging, imperfect reality of which I still have so much to explore. But I know I’m ready to try, and I think that might just be enough.
Commenti