Twilight

Still Team Edward: Finding Myself in Forks Again

It always makes me laugh, the soft, knowing kind of laugh, how when life starts to fray at the edges, I instinctively return to old comforts. It’s like muscle memory. Like slipping on an old hoodie that still smells like your childhood bedroom. And more often than not, when the real world feels too sharp, I find myself back in Forks.

Yes. That Forks. Rain-soaked, pine-lined, brooding and strange. The one that lives in the pages of Twilight.

Look, I didn’t mean to spiral into a full-blown Twilight renaissance, but it’s trending all over social media again and suddenly I’m thirteen years old, emotionally unstable, and very much Team Edward.

There’s something about it, that town, those woods, that endless overcast sky, that still wraps around me like a safety net. A world where emotions are heightened, where love is life or death, where people are more than they seem. Forks was the first place I ever saw characters who felt like reflections of the chaos inside me. It’s funny how a fantasy about vampires and high school angst became my emotional blueprint. But then again, maybe it’s not so funny. Maybe it makes perfect sense.

“I decided as long as I'm going to hell, I might as well do it thoroughly.”
― Stephenie Meyer, Twilight

Because I’ve always felt like I was standing just outside the circle. Like Bella Swan in that cafeteria on her first day, trying to blend in but knowing deep down you were never meant to. That sense of otherness has followed me for as long as I can remember. I hinted at it in a previous post, but it's more than a hint, it’s a thread. I’ve spent most of my life chasing excellence, driven by this quiet pressure to always be composed, capable, brilliant. Somewhere along the line, people started looking at me like I had it all figured out. Like I could do anything.

But the truth is I’ve never felt entirely human under all that expectation.

Maybe that’s why I related to Edward so much. That ache of being too much and never enough all at once. The weight of his mind, always thinking, always burdened, always on the outside even when surrounded by others. Edward, whose curse was knowing too much, feeling too deeply, loving too fiercely. I felt that. I still do. It’s the same loneliness I carry even now. Twenty-five, post-board exam, and stuck in that brutal limbo of waiting. I gave everything I had to that test, and now I’m just floating. Hollow. Hoping the world I sacrificed for won’t crumble in return.

“I like the night. Without the dark, we'd never see the stars.”
― Stephenie Meyer, Twilight

I haven’t felt comfort in a long time. Not real comfort. Not the kind that lets you exhale fully. Med school doesn’t offer that. It demands and consumes and leaves you with just enough breath to keep going. And so, like clockwork, I retreat. Back to the story I first met under the covers of my childhood bed.

I was maybe seven, maybe ten. I can’t really remember. Just a kid with too many thoughts and not enough places to put them. I remember reading Breaking Dawn, wide-eyed and utterly confused at the infamous feather scene, not quite understanding what was happening but knowing it was important. Knowing it meant something about love, about vulnerability, about surrendering to someone entirely.

Twilight was never just a love story to me. It was a roadmap. It taught me that there’s strength in sensitivity. That loneliness doesn’t mean you’re broken. That longing can be sacred. Bella wasn’t extraordinary in any traditional sense. She was awkward, reserved, constantly self-doubting. But still, she was loved deeply. Seen fully. And Edward, all tortured logic and aching restraint, loved her because of that.

When I was seventeen, working the register at Target, a customer took my hand, looked me in the eye, and said, “You’re an old soul.” That wasn’t the first time. And it wouldn’t be the last. Maybe they saw the quiet. Maybe they sensed the weight. Maybe they saw a little of Forks in me, something timeless and tired, waiting for a place to belong.

So yes, I binged all five movies again recently. They’re back on Netflix. And I don’t care what anyone says about them. The color grading of the first film is iconic. The soundtrack is perfect. The overacted brooding and awkward pauses are cinematic brilliance. People love to mock what they don’t understand. But Twilight always knew what it was, a story for people who feel too much. A story for the soft-spoken and the overly intense and the ones who dream of a love that quiets the storm inside.

One day, I want to visit Forks. Walk through those misty woods. Sit in a local coffee shop with a paperback in my hand and the sound of rain hitting the windows. I want to see La Push, feel the pull of the tide, breathe in the moss and fog and magic of it all. Medicine is important. But this, this feeling of being alive, of seeking beauty, of being transported, that’s what I miss. That’s what I crave.

I’m reading Midnight Sun now. Living the same story again but through Edward’s eyes, through the eyes of someone who feels everything and yet still wonders if he deserves joy. And I get it. I feel that too. I love the arts, books, films, stories that teach us how to survive our own minds. Whether it’s Twilight, or Love, Simon, or some unnamed indie film that wrecks you quietly (HIGHLY suggest “The Way Way Back”-2013 or “The Map of Tiny Perfect Things”-2021), I cling to stories that remind me that being human, truly, messily human, is enough.

“When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it’s not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end.”
― Stephanie Meyer, Twilight

And maybe one day I’ll grow out of this phase. Maybe one day I’ll stop needing fictional worlds to make sense of my own. But today is not that day. Today, I’m still finding pieces of myself in the shadows of Forks. In the longing stares. In the unresolved silence. In the stories that carried me through the first time the world started to fray, and every time since.

Love, Sami