I Only Knew Love from a Book

I didn’t grow up with love.
Not the kind people post about. Not the kind that holds you through grief or sees you clearly or stays when it’s hard.

I grew up in a house made of noise and fear and guilt. A house where the air was thick with chaos, and I learned to disappear just to survive it.

I was the oldest. The caregiver. The fixer. The emotional buffer between everyone else's damage.

But I was never just Faith.

I didn’t know how to be.

So I learned to be human the only way I could:
Through fiction.

I picked pieces of characters and slotted them into holes in my soul.
I stole Jo March’s courage, Arwen’s stillness, Lila Bard’s fury.
I borrowed personalities like armor and called it survival.
And when I looked in the mirror, I saw a face—but I didn’t know her name.
Was she a monster of literary proportions or just a lost child, starved of love and wandering without a map?

Books raised me.
Books taught me what it meant to be seen.
Books gave me families who came back, who apologized, who didn’t leave you bleeding and call it discipline.

So when I say I’ve read too many books, I don’t mean it as a joke.
I mean it as a confession.

Step One: My Book Taste Is a Diagnosis

I read everything.
Fantasy. Romance. Magical realism. Grief-soaked horror. Found families in space. Doomed lovers under gothic staircases. If it has a heartbeat and a little tragedy, I’m in.

Most people read to be entertained.
I read like I’m searching for a mirror that won’t crack when I touch it.

And my taste? It’s not a quirk.
It’s a symptom.

✔️ I crave intensity because I didn’t grow up safe.
✔️ I need magic because the real world was cruel and gray.
✔️ I reread stories where people stay—because I still don’t believe anyone will.

Step Two: The Scene That Broke Me

Outlander. That scene.

You know the one.

A man is raped.

And I shattered.

Not because I hadn’t read violence before—God knows I had.
But because I didn’t see it coming. Because I’d been taught that only women are violated in stories. That this kind of horror had a gender. That we should be used to it by now.

But this? This was different.
This ripped the narrative open.
And something inside me came spilling out—something I thought I’d locked away for good.

I sobbed until I couldn’t breathe.
I threw up.
I called my therapist mid-panic attack, my voice wrecked and childlike.

I had told myself I was healed.

I wasn’t.

That scene didn't just trigger me.
It unlocked a vault I didn’t know I’d sealed shut.

And I had to ask myself:
What else have I buried under chapters and metaphors?

Step Three: Why I Don’t Read Thrillers

People say, “You just haven’t read the right one.”

No. I have.
That’s the problem.

Thrillers terrify me because I already live in one.
I already check behind me in parking lots.
I already hold my keys like a weapon.
I already know what it feels like to be prey.

I don’t need to be reminded that evil exists.

I need stories that show me kindness does, too.

Step Four: Found Family Isn’t Just a Trope—It’s a Wound

People think I love found family because it’s sweet.

It’s not.
It’s because I never had one.

Found family means someone sees you and stays.
Not out of blood or obligation—but by choice.
It means love isn’t something you perform for.
It means love doesn’t leave.

Growing up, I had to be useful to be tolerated.
I had to be funny. Strong. Helpful.
No one held space for the quiet, broken, unfiltered version of me.

But books did.

Books gave me homes I didn’t have to earn.
Mothers who apologized. Fathers who softened.
Friends who didn’t vanish the second the performance slipped.

Step Five: Who Am I, Really?

After dissecting my trauma through every genre imaginable, here’s what I’ve figured out:

🧠 Attachment Style: Anxious. Desperate. Hungry.
✔️ I crave closeness but expect betrayal.
✔️ I fear being seen, but more than that, I fear being forgotten.

💔 Core Wound: Unloveable unless useful
✔️ If I’m not helping, I’m disposable.
✔️ If I’m not perfect, I’m poison.
✔️ If I stop performing, will anyone stay?

🔥 Defense Mechanism: Literary shape-shifting
✔️ I turn myself into characters because it feels safer than being real.
✔️ I rewrite my pain into stories so it doesn’t feel like it owns me.
✔️ I don’t just escape into fiction—I rebuild myself inside it.

So Why Did I Start BookShook?

Because I needed to find other people like me.

People who cry over characters harder than they cry over real people.
People who find pieces of themselves in fictional orphans and half-broken heroes.
People who were taught they were too much or too messy or too weird—and found out, through books, that they were actually just human.

BookShook isn’t just about reading.

It’s about surviving.
It’s about rebuilding.
It’s about finding your people in the pages—and then in real life.

Final Step: Am I Okay?

No. Not really.

But I’m more me now than I’ve ever been.

I’m not a perfect heroine. I’m not a clean arc. I’m not healed.

But I am here.
Still reading. Still writing. Still choosing softness over silence.
Still picking up broken pieces and turning them into story.

So let me ask you—

📖 What book broke you?
📖 What genre holds the map to your inner chaos?
📖 What story taught you who you are?

I’ll be here. Waiting.
We can unpack it together.

And if you ever need to cry over a character who died 300 pages too soon—
You know where to find me.

—Faith
Founder of BookShook
Raised by stories. Rewritten by survival.