Way back in 2009 I was a gangly (and angsty) fourteen-year-old. It was a simpler time, although my fourteen-year-old self would never admit this.
A time when paperback books were more popular than kindle.
When the idea of a world-wide pandemic would be the plot of a thriller novel.
When school was taught in classrooms, and I didn’t have the crushing expectations of adulthood on my back.
Vampires and Werewolves suddenly became the flavour of the month and I could not get enough.
Bella and Edward’s hardships made light of my measly fourteen-year-old problems – not enough friends, horrible at putting on eyeliner. The usual.
My fourteen-year-old self would never forgive me if I didn’t stress the fact that I read Twilight before it was cool. Like before the movies were released. My seventeen-year-old self might die if she knew I was telling you, dear reader, that I read these books more times than I can count. And that I had a seriously unhealthy obsession with Edward Cullen.
By the time I hit seventeen, you see, Twilight was no longer “cool” and the fact that I still had a closeted crush on Edward (and, let’s be honest, Jacob), was cringeworthy. So I shunned my old favourite, banishing Forkes and the Vampires and Werewolves to a dusty old shelf until I’d one day be ready to pick them up again.
A few weeks back, I found myself longing for some comfort and solace in the whirlwind of the end of 2020, and who better to bring that comfort than an old friend in the form of a long-forgotten book?
Telling anyone who would listen that I was only rereading them for “research purposes”, I picked up my well-loved copies of the books from the shelf and began reading.
I finished the entire saga (four books, a few thousand pages) within a week, struggling to tear myself away from the books to do mundane human things like eating, sleeping and going to the loo.
I found myself rooting for Edward and Bella in Twilight, sobbing over heartbreak in New Moon, sobbing even more in Eclipse and squealing like a teenaged girl the whole way through Breaking Dawn. Over ten years since reading the novels for the first time, and it felt just as intense as the first time.
Reading Twilight in my mid-twenties was different. More relatable in some ways, having actually had a real boyfriend and had my heart broken. But also, a bit alarming as I realized just how poor a role model Bella Swan is for the modern woman.
As a die-hard “Team Edward” member in my teens, I now look at Jacob with softer eyes, thinking about what would really be best for Bella. As a teen I so desperately wanted to experience a whirlwind, knock-you-off-your-feet romance like Bella. Now I see a girl who perhaps needed to spend more time with her friends and, you know, not rush into anything crazy like marriage, bearing a half-vampire, half-human child and immortality.
Reading this old favourite was a shot of nostalgia straight to the heart, and I allowed myself to be fully wrapped up in it. I let myself bawl as Edward leaves Bella, and felt my mood sour as she was plunged into the depths of depression. I stayed up until 2 am finding out if the Cullens beat the bad guys. I emerged from my reading binge foggy eyed, with a sore neck from days spent crouched over the books.
I regret nothing.
Except ever thinking that I was “too cool” for a book, or that rereading was cheating. So if you happen to be reading this, I implore you: go reread your Twilight, or that awful Nicholas Sparks novel which you secretly loved. Or your high school English set work that made you feel something for the first time. Do it, and do it proudly.
The joy of re-reading and reconnecting with an old story should not be something you reserve for Netflix.
– Ali
