A Passionate Love Letter to Twilight
I discovered Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight at the ripe young age of 12 years old. My dad accidentally bought me the third book, Eclipse, as part of my middle school’s mandatory reading initiative. I opened the book none-the-wiser, finding myself in Bella’s kitchen. As expected, Charlie was in the living room watching the game. (Bella has to do all the housework in Twilight because the narrative subscribes to traditional male-female household roles.)
Bella and Edward were bickering about college. This would be a conversation they’d have again and again. It wasn’t until later (circa $20,000+ in student loan debt) that I’d realize just how good Bella had it. She found a vampire boyfriend and he was willing to pay for an Ivy League education? Sign me up for a clingy boyfriend if it means a life free from student debt.
Because I didn’t know who Bella was, let alone why she was so fixated on Edward’s willingness to pay for Dartmouth (or was it the University of Alaska?), I shut Eclipse then and there. I didn’t open it for another few months when I’d finally decided to read the series from the beginning.
Before we get into this long-winded rant about Twilight that nobody asked for, I need to discuss my love of reading. I was always a reader. Like most kids from divorced parents, I spent a lot of time alone in my room. I was a weird, quiet kid, and one of my favorite things was reading romance books. Especially romance books about princesses. I had already made my way through the “older kid” section at Barnes & Noble, so I was slowly stumbling into the world of young adult.
I have a bad habit of taking things a bit — ahem — too far. Exhibit A: the Divergent tattoo on my ribcage. But I’ll digress to a less permanent example that doesn’t involve permanent body art. When I was in middle school, I was obsessed with this book series about girls in boarding school. This was at the peak of the Zoey 101 Era (circa 2004 ad), so it had a lot going for it already. What I’m trying to say is this book wasn’t just fiction to my impressionable mind. This was when I assumed Aaron Carter was my soul mate, if that gives you a clearer picture. This book series was The Coolest Thing I’d ever read, and I tucked this information away at the back of my mind for later.
The opportunity never really presented itself, naturally, since my family wasn’t exactly of the northeastern elite. But not to be deterred, I forced the opportunity myself. That’s right, I shipped myself off to boarding school. Sure, it might have been a bit more involved than this, but I can confidently say my determination to go to a preppy, snooty boarding school in the northeast stemmed from that very book series that shall not be named.
We’re almost to the Twilight part, I promise.
This is just a long-winded way of saying I take books really seriously. So when eighth-grade me finally opened Twilight for the first time, oh boy, she was in for a wild ride. I devoured the book like it was the most amazing thing I’d ever gotten my hands on — because it was. It evoked a passion for the dark and twisty that I didn’t even know I had. These thoughts I can’t decode, amiright?
Finally, we’ve made it to the part where I start defending Twilight. Put your pitchforks down, people. Let me preface this by saying that I understand Twilight is not an example of a healthy, thriving relationship. I understand and rationalize this, and I’ve decided I like it anyway. I recently revisited the series as an adult, both physically and figuratively. I mean physically because I stopped at a grocery store in Forks, Washington to pee, and that’s probably the closest I’ll ever get to living in a young adult novel. I mean figuratively because I recently re-read each chapter one at a time, letting myself absorb the gloriously simple language like the shining example of youth culture that it is. Since taking both of these journeys (the grocery store bathroom and the re-reading), I’ve come to the conclusion that the book is the most glorious symbol of not giving a damn. Bella lacks critical thinking skills, yet she’s willing to throw herself off a cliff just to get what she wants. That’s the kind of blind ambition I’ve adapted into my own life.
You could make the argument that Bella is written as an “everygirl,” but she was also written as someone who knows what she wants and is willing to get it at literally any cost. Does she take it too far? Definitely. Nobody told her to ditch Alice and go to that ballet studio to get her leg broken and blood sucked, but my girl is a go-getter. She did it anyway because she’s brave and she does what she has to do to get what she wants.
In a dark, twisty way, this blatant lack of self-concern for the seemingly “rational” choice resonates with me. I applied to boarding school despite my complete lack of connections, amazing grades, or (the big whammy) money. I got rejected from every school my first year of applying. How dare those big-name schools with acceptance rates lower than Yale not accept my public-school, scholarship self? But, like Bella, I didn’t give a gosh darn crap. I was back at it the next year, applying with an even stronger application than before and not taking no for an answer. I applied to eight schools. I only got into one. One was enough.
Bella goes after what she wants, no matter the cost. So do I, even if it means taking a year off from my dream school to travel the world, turning down said dream school six months later, dragging myself out of another bout of depression, quitting my day job to work for myself, or even just taking a goddamn day off.
In Breaking Dawn, Bella jokes that self-control is her superpower. In a lot of ways, I think that this is my superpower too. Self-control to get through college with two jobs, self-control to start my own business when my day job just spirals me deeper into my depression, self-control to just not care what I’m “supposed” to do.
This is waxing a bit too poetic for a Twilight essay.
Even for me.
It goes without saying that Twilight gets hate just because it’s something liked by teenage girls. As a teenage girl who liked Twilight and then pretended she didn’t all through High School, I’m tired of it. While I don’t necessarily want a romance that looks like a young adult love triangle, I have a lot to thank Twilight for.
At the very least, it reminded me that I wasn’t alone with my dark and twisty feelings. As an adult, I can look back on that girl reading about Forks in her room alone at night. I can thank Bella for igniting a bright, hot spark underneath me, and for reminding me that the most wonderful things happen sometimes if you just go blindly into that twilight.
Samantha Tetrault is the nonfiction and fiction editor, as well as the print design editor. She is a full-time marketing writer, blogger, and podcaster. She loves working for herself, reading bad books, and spending too much time on Reddit.
