#1: Things You Really Don’t Need to Know (But I’m Telling You Anyway)
🖋️ By Faith

I read a lot.
Like, a terrifying amount.
Like, if there was text on a shampoo bottle, I read it cover to cover in the shower and cried when I ran out of conditioner and words.

Here’s the part you didn’t ask for:
I was punished with books.
Not the fun ones.
Not Narnia or Nancy Drew or the glorious chaos of Goosebumps.

No.
I wasn’t grounded or sent to my room—I was banned from fiction.
Sentenced to Bible verses, encyclopedias, and cookbooks like I was a literary criminal.

And oh…
They regretted that. 😇

Because I found God in the footnotes.
I found rebellion in the recipe introductions.
I devoured the opening paragraph of every casserole like it was a secret memoir from a woman who survived something no one talks about.

"This was my grandmother’s dish. She made it when we were sad."
I read that line at 8 years old and felt like I had just unlocked someone’s diary.
Every lasagna had lore.
Every pie had pain.
I wasn’t just reading recipes—I was consuming stories in disguise.

And the encyclopedia?
Let’s just say Greek Mythology was right there.
Naked gods, chaotic lovers, betrayal, power, punishment, transformation.

I was 9.
Reading about Medusa and Persephone like it was Bible study.
No one stopped me.
No one realized that “innocent” knowledge is a myth in itself.

And so:
While other kids read Junie B. Jones,
I read about Hera destroying her husband’s mistresses.
I read about blood turned into flowers.
About monsters who were once just girls no one protected.

This is what happens when you punish a reader with words.
We get dangerous.

We read everything.
We make rituals out of margins.
We find loopholes in recipes.
We fall in love with gods and grieve for mortals.

I am who I am because someone told me:
“You can’t read that.”

So I read harder.
I read wider.
I read past the rules.
I became fictionally wrecked and wildly unrepentant.

And I never shrank again.

📖
Still devouring pages,
Faith