I Need a Bubble
The Reality of Twilight
The following quotes are from New Moon – The Twilight Saga (Stephenie Meyer)
"I felt like I was trapped in one of those terrifying nightmares, the one where you have to run, run till your lungs burst, but you can’t make your body move fast enough."
Bella Swan, New Moon, Preface, p.1
"I don’t care! You can have my soul. I don’t want it without you—it’s yours already!"
Bella Swan, New Moon, Chapter 3, p.69
"With shaky legs, ignoring the fact that my action was useless, I followed him into the forest. The evidence of his path had disappeared instantly. There were no footprints, the leaves were still again, but I walked forward without thinking. I could not do anything else. I had to keep moving. If I stopped looking for him, it was over. Love, life, meaning… over."
Bella Swan, New Moon, Chapter 3, p.73
"I wondered how long this could last. Maybe someday, years from now—if the pain would just decrease to the point where I could bear it—I would be able to look back on those few short months that would always be the best of my life. And, if it were possible that the pain would ever soften enough to allow me to do that, I was sure that I would feel grateful for as much time as he’d given me. More than I’d asked for, more than I’d deserved. Maybe someday I’d be able to see it that way."
Bella Swan, New Moon, Chapter 5, p.124
"The absence of him is everywhere I look. It is like a big hole has been punched through my chest." Bella Swan
~~~ I never thought I could know the pain of death by being with someone so alive; but that’s exactly what I felt being with him. I have always said that when we broke up a little piece of my soul died and I have never fully recovered.
It’s not a matter of wanting to be with him or of ever seeing him again in this, or any, lifetime. It’s a matter of my first love. And my first real heartbreak. It’s a matter of someone loving me and making promises to me that he wasn’t able to keep. A matter of t aking it all away in an instant. Of making it as if he never existed.
How does one recover from something like that? How is a girl supposed to press on when it hurts just to breathe? Just to be? You go through the motions but you’re not really there.
I have never encountered a book providing such an emotional response. But while reading the second of the four Twilight Saga books I can remember vividly laying on Blair’s couch while he slept in the other room on a late summer morning. I was completely enthralled with the story and I felt connected with the characters as I read on and on. And I was shocked when I realized that, even though I could feel the wrenching heartache in my chest, the actual physical pain I was feeling, that I had tears streaming down my face. Although the story is fictional, I felt connected to it, to the characters…like it was all part of my life. It stunned me for a long time how I could feel so many emotions, so much sadness and defeat, over a fictional story aimed for teens.
But then, not long ago, it dawned on me. The story hit home with me because, other than the vampire plot, it was my story. It was my life. From a long, long time ago it’s what I went through. I couldn’t believe that I had been so silly to overlook it. The person in question is out of my mind, has been for many years, but it was, in all truthfulness, my first real relationship, my first love, and as I said, my first real heartache. It does not mean I am in love with him or having any feelings about him at all these days, other than the memory of the pain he caused me when I was young.
And like Bella, I do not regret anything. Because that love, that person, meant something to me at one point. No matter how much pain he caused me then I do not regret the time we spent together. The heartache made me stronger and I’m proud of what I went through.
~Sandy