Why I Love Twilight: I Think I Figured It Out. Finally.

Ahem... [puts on serious I iz thinkin' cap...]

In some ways, Twitarded was born not just to entertain Snarkier Than You and myself [and you guys!] but also to sort of...exorcise our Twilight-y demons. Like many of you, STY and I had no fucking idea why we liked the saga so much. In fact, when we were doing interviews, this was the dreaded question, the one we were never quite sure how to answer. We even put the question out there to you in an effort to better understand our own obsession.

The long and the short of it is that whenever anyone asked me why I liked Twilight, I never really had an answer besides, "I just fucking do!! What the fuck is your problem? READ THE BOOK AND YOU'LL KNOW EXACTLY WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!!!"

But Grandma was a little offended by my answer so I resolved to dig deeper and continue on my crude path of self-twiscovery. This was largely a thankless task and frankly I was wondering if I should just stop asking "why?" and just go with it for once and for all, no questions asked.

But then I think I found IT. The holy grail of answers to that burning "why do you love Twilight" question... Well, someone else found it for me, actually. A little while back one of our readers, Janieisavamp, sent us a link to an article that really blew me away. This article seems to have been largely overlooked in the Twilight blogosphere, which is an absolute crime given how absolutely spot-on it is. So, at the risk of boring the panties off of you donkey-snatches, Imma get serious here for a minute.

In her article The Once and Future Fairytale, Shahirah Majumdar muses about Bella and Edward's love through a very modern day viewpoint - it's a little skeptical with a pinch of cynicism but in the end she comes away with why this saga has gotten under our skin. She gets it, plain and simple:

In life as I know it, among all the savvy boys and girls gliding in dark jeans down the Bowery, it's simply not safe to feel the way Bella feels about Edward. We were seventeen once, but now we know better. After years of dating, of crashing in and out of love, of the resulting flattening of the soul, the damaged ego, the imagined humiliations most of us have learned that it is prudent to set the dial low. To love that much, to have one's happiness revolve so completely around another person, is a recipe for disaster. To love someone that much is to give them the power to hurt you, and which one of us wants to go through all of that again?

For many [if not most] of us, our life partners are not our first loves. They are not the ones that we shared the rocket-ship ride of teenage love with. I still, after 15 years, remember the first date I had with the first boy I fell in love with. He wore red cords, Doc Martens and a brown sweater. I wore blue plaid pants, Docs and brown sweater and we sat in his room, adorned with punk posters and his own paintings and watched A Clockwork Orange (did ya expect anything else?). It was snowing when I left and he asked me to call him when I got home. We talked on the phone for hours until we fell asleep together, but apart. Two and half years later I went away to college and ended it, breaking both our hearts in the process. He was ready for forever, I think. I was not.

And this article, my lovelies, explains in a way I cannot why I think I love the series so fucking much.

As for the others, the mothers and the grandmothers and the young marrieds like my cousin, there somehow still exists a secret self, one that doesn't belong to the drudgery of car pools or cubicles or two-for-one supermarket specials; a secret self that swells in the night, pleasuring itself with dreams of fevered romanticism.

Bella and Edward's love for each other is unswervingly devoted. There is nothing they wouldn't do to save the other, to be together. It's the kind of love that teenage girls dream about and it's the kind of love that only exists between the dust jackets of books or on movie theater screens. It's a love untainted by the mundane of every day life. It hasn't seen the pressure of job loss or pay cuts. It's never had to make the choice between living your dreams or staying with the person you love. It hasn't been privy to the snippy arguments about taking out the garbage or leaving your underwear on the floor, again. Bella and Edward's love may be a constant fight between life and death but... sometimes it's the littlest things that cause the binds of love to grow brittle and eventually break.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not in any way attempting to minimize my modern concept of love. Am I being a tad cynical? Probably. But I would shiv a bitch in a heartbeat to protect ML from hurt or harm. And I know he'd do the same for me. Our love may be imperfect but it's ours, nonetheless.

But, would I change it all if I could? If I had the option, would I want Bella and Edward's version of love?

Not a chance in hell.

I'll take ML and bills and dirty underwear on the floor any day of the week but, when I just want to escape life for a little bit, I'll grab my Twilight books and bury myself under the covers. Later, I'll emerge, refreshed and prepared, to pick the fucking gahdamned laundry off the floor, cursing all the way. Then I'll go and find My Love, hug him and tell him he's the bestest ever. Even if he does leave his shit on the floor.

That being said - take the time out to read this article. I mean, really sit down, and give this article a chance. Tell the S/O dinner didn't agree with you and hide in the bathroom if you must but I think this article really hits the nail on the head.