How I Became "One Of Those People"

I feel I should take this moment to remind everyone that there was a time when I was not sickly obsessed with the Twilight books and Robert Pattinson, no we all have my dear friend Lizzie to thank for creating that monster. I can clearly remember being in Halifax when the Twilight hysteria first hit. I reacted to it the same way I did with Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings. Thought everyone was losing their minds and avoided it on general principle of not becoming one of "those people".

Then I arrived in Fort McMurray, and Lizzie was in the full on obsession mode having just finished all 4 books. There's some kind of mind control thing involved where once you become obsessed, you feel the need to make everyone around you obsessed too. I wasn't having it for weeks. She kept trying to get me to read them or watch the movie and I refused and held my ground based on two things. First, I was in no mood to read a love story upon arriving here. I had just broken up with my fiance Gary who I was with for 8 years. Love could go fuck itself as far as I was concerned. Second, vampire books scare me and make me do crazy things like refuse to sleep without a cross on and a blessed virgin mary medal hanging on my doorknob (that's what happened when I read Salems Lot). I didn't realize at the time of course that they weren't scary vampires.

The Robert Pattinson obsession is equally baffling as before I saw Twilight I could not make any sense of how people thought he was attractive. I seriously thought he was ugly. Then I saw Twilight. Then I discovered he was British. Then I discovered how adorably self deprecating and modest he is, and I was done for. For those of you that still don't get it, these might help:








So eventually I gave in and watched the movie which I just thought was ok the first time around, but interested me enough to give the books a try. Then that was it, I never had a chance. HOOKED. To the point that by the third book I couldn't handle having to stop reading to do things like eat, shower, etc. So I downloaded the audio books and took my laptop in the bathroom with me when I showered haha. And as silly as it sounds to me even now, reading those books was what helped me finally realize I had to let Gary go, and us breaking up was a good thing. I know Edward seems kind of wussy in the movies to some people, but you really fall in love with the character of Edward Cullen when you read the books. Just reading about that devotion made me realize that while no one like him actually exists, I deserve to be with a guy who at least would never want to hurt me for the world. During the last year of our relationship Gary seemed to just be spending his time coming up with new and inventive ways to completely crush me and break my heart.

It's funny to me that reading those books was my first real step in moving on with my life. Sad and embarrassing too haha. My last night of work in Halifax is starting to seem kind of creepy in retrospect. I had just started working at this stupid laundromat directly across the street from the condo I was supposed to move into before Gary and I broke up. The girl I was working with was reading the last book, Breaking Dawn, and trying to sell me on it like every other Twilight obsessed person in the world. I humored her and let her go on and on about them, but never had any plans to read them even though she said she was going to lend me her copy of the first book. We spent most of the shift talking about the books. Well she did as I pretended to be interested haha. The other thing we talked about that night was her family. She told me how after 10 years of marriage, her uncle had recently come home to find almost everything in his house, including his wife, gone. He had no clue anything was even wrong. She never talked to him or told him she was going to leave, and he didn't hear from her after that until he got the divorce papers in the mail. Both sides of the family, his and hers, were baffled because he loved her to death and would have done anything for her, no one could understand why she'd leave him. I remember saying to her how horrible that would be, to find out your marriage was over by walking in to discover everything was gone.

So Gary picked me up after my shift was over that night, dropped me off at home, and I walked in to discover....all of his things were gone. No note, no nothing. He was gone. Seriously that is pretty trippy is it not? That's like one of those things that happens in a book or a movie, not in real life. You know, foreshadowing and all that.

So yeah, now I'm one of "those people" and I say the hell with it, everyone has something nerdy they enjoy, why bother being embarrassed and trying to hide it? My name is Cathy, and I'm a Twilightaholic.