Growing Up With TWILIGHT
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Twilight took us all by surprise.
My first memory about Twilight is bringing it with me to the laundry room in our basement because I couldn’t bear to stop reading in order to put my clothes in the washer. I held the book in one hand and stuffed the clothes in the machine by handfuls with the other.
My second memory takes place on a day in winter when every neighboring school district had called a snow day except for ours. My mom was able to drop me off at school in the morning, but school buses couldn’t make it through the snow. The very few people who did make it to school on time didn’t justify holding class, so we all just kind of hung out inside the school in the morning.
I pulled my copy of Twilight out of my backpack and sat at a table near my locker to read. The school was quiet. Students and teachers filtered in over the next few hours, shaking the snow off their boots. I barely noticed.
Things I felt as I read and reread Twilight as a 13-year-old: elation, and like my heart could fly. Despair, that none of it was real. Loneliness. Hunger. Desperation to grow up. And, finally, the desire to have someone love me so much that it consumed them.
B.T. (Before Twilight)
In 2005, I was a thirteen year old girl. My memories of eighth grade are mostly a blur of attempting to execute this role correctly. Each morning, I did my level best to neatly line my eyes with thick black eyeliner (times were tough before beauty guru YouTube was there to guide us). Hoping to land on a voice that sounded right to me, I consciously tested out different intonations of speaking. I loved my friends, but it seemed that when other people looked at me, they saw right through my face to my blood and organs and bone. I felt like the wrong type of girl, like a monster inside my skin. Just teen girl stuff. Somewhere in there, as I stomped around my middle school in my green Converse and an ever-present cloud of doom, my friend Haley told me about a book I had to read.On Knowing My Bright Beating Heart
My first memory about Twilight is bringing it with me to the laundry room in our basement because I couldn’t bear to stop reading in order to put my clothes in the washer. I held the book in one hand and stuffed the clothes in the machine by handfuls with the other.
My second memory takes place on a day in winter when every neighboring school district had called a snow day except for ours. My mom was able to drop me off at school in the morning, but school buses couldn’t make it through the snow. The very few people who did make it to school on time didn’t justify holding class, so we all just kind of hung out inside the school in the morning.
I pulled my copy of Twilight out of my backpack and sat at a table near my locker to read. The school was quiet. Students and teachers filtered in over the next few hours, shaking the snow off their boots. I barely noticed.
Things I felt as I read and reread Twilight as a 13-year-old: elation, and like my heart could fly. Despair, that none of it was real. Loneliness. Hunger. Desperation to grow up. And, finally, the desire to have someone love me so much that it consumed them.
Being Thirteen is Very Hard
Twilight blended concepts like death and love and devotion and desire in a perfect cocktail, erm, soda beverage, for my 13-year-old brain. Edward watching Bella sleep without her knowing was romantic. It was hot when he pushed her against a car before kissing her to demonstrate how very Strong and Dangerous he was.(yikes)
To a 13-year-old girl who felt confused and wrong in every way, the idea of someone being dangerously obsessed with me was appealing. I do not know why, and I do not know who to blame. Bella didn’t find love until she met a vampire, I thought as I graphed slope and intercept equations, and ate chicken nuggets in the cafeteria, and looked in the mirror and sucked in my stomach. Maybe I would find my own monster. Maybe I didn’t belong to the world of humans, either.Yes, it Really is That Bad
The Twilight saga has a lot to answer for. Here’s an abbreviated list:- Why is every relationship dynamic in this book so abusive and scary?
- Why does Meyer write like that?
- Did you know that Meyer has never thanked the Quileute Nation for her bastardization of their people, culture, and history?
