4: The Shame

I have read so. Many. Romances. And hidden all of them. Always on a Kindle, face down, no one sees the cover. Or I'll skip the part in the conversation where we all share what we're reading. And while I was embarrassed about all this reading, I was also just so. Very. Interested. Couldn't stop. So: this is the part of this series where I go into the dark parts of myself (or, keep going, I guess) and try to get at something that's always been simmering under the surface, but maybe I couldn't quite describe.The first three episodes were about compulsion for these stories, the formula of them as a medicine, and the interpersonal, magical tension of forced proximity. This fourth episode is about the energy that sits underneath all of them: shame. Shame and desire go hand-in-hand. So if romance is about desire (it is), it's also about shame (it is). In this episode I sit with that. I read closely from a KJ Charles historical fiction Think of England, I look at my own stuff along the way, and I try to investigate shame instead of apologizing for it.