Twilight and Teen Grief

The funny ways nostalgia tangles itself into grief

I was in a charity shop a few days ago, doing my usual bargain hunt, trying to find yet another sundress that I don’t need, when something weird happened.

The one I was in wasn’t particularly great, there wasn’t much in the way of clothes (Nothing beats NCBI, my fave!) and so I turned to the bookshelf.

Flicking through the countless paperbacks that were about a euro each, I pulled out a copy of New Moon, aka the second Twilight book. If you were entwined in that world in the mid to late 2000s, you’ll know the cover. Even if you weren’t, you could probably draw it, just from osmosis, because it was bloody everywhere. Something about that weathered black book, with the white and red flower on the front made me feel immediately uneasy and almost in pain. 

It sounds dramatic right? Almost like a Twilight fan fic, where the next line I write is that Edward Cullen was standing right behind me… But the feeling I had was more like anxiety.

Over the last three or so years I’ve learned to get a lot better at listening to my body and brain when they’re unhappy. (All that money spent on therapy was worth it!) Sometimes I’ll get a pang of anxiety and move on, before saying, ‘no, hold on now, go back to that and see what it wants’. Because I’ve learned that even negative feelings are trying to do something for you, so it’s worth paying attention.

Usually the feeling is due to overwhelm, or stress. 

This time though, it was down to pure nostalgia. 

If I so much as see the Twilight book covers, of any kind, it catapults me back to school when we first started reading them. 

Our beloved best friend Shauna was the first one to tell us about them. Having family in America meant that Shauna was always the one in the know, from American DVDs to hit songs, she just knew about cool pop culture stuff before the rest of us. When I brought in a preview of Twilight that came with KISS (or Bliss?) magazine, she already knew about it. When the first movie came out, she saw it before us. 

Like most teenage girls growing up in that time, Twilight was a huge part of our lives. The movies were the backdrop to nothing short of a fucking crazy time for us as a friend group, who were all going through our own tough stuff, the major one being that Shauna was sick. 

The first one came out in 2008, when I was thirteen - the year my dad died. 

When we were 14, Shauna was too sick to come to the first screening of New Moon in cinemas in Galway, which we had planned as a girl’s trip. 

By the time Breaking Dawn Part 1 came out, Shauna had died. 

(In googling this, I see that BDP1 came out on November 18th, the day before she died. But I can’t say we were paying much attention to the release date of that one around that time). 

It sounds stupid, but I think as a teen you’re so entwined and excited by these pop culture phenomenons that they shape those years. And so, when those years are wrapped up in hard stuff, like illness, huge changes, cancer, and horrifically, Shauna’s passing, they all make you feel a bit sick.

So when I absentmindedly pulled that book from the shelf in a charity shop, the pang of grief knocked me for six. I was so incredibly sad, I felt pain in my chest and a sting in my stomach. 

I am so glad I now have the tools to figure out what I’m feeling. A past version of me would have just sat with that feeling all day, not really knowing why it was there. But this time, I could catch it, and nurture it a bit. I could understand that this deep pain coursing through me was just proof of our wonderful friendship. I can appreciate it. I’m so grateful it exists. 

Nostalgia is a funny thing, it’s supposed to be this fun look back at a time gone by, but it’s always made me feel a bit sick. My teen years were wrapped in grief, and so I can’t look back at anything from that time without feeling all the stuff grief comes with. 

I feel silly writing about Shauna in this context. The truth is, that girl deserves a whole bloody book about her, because she was just so class, and warm and kind and funny. I will write about that better one day, but no words I write will ever do her justice. 

For now, I’ll just say that when I am missing her (which is genuinely every single day), there are things that make me feel closer to her. There are everyday things that remind me of our girlhood and teenhood. It’s why I have smiley faces everywhere, from clothes to lamps to a tattoo on my ankle.

But sometimes I want to set aside time to really think of her. Almost like we’re spending time together. I’ll stick on our favourite movie, Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging, I’ll listen to a song from High School Musical, and if I have enough time to really have a good cry and a grief day, I’ll listen to a recording of her singing Someone Like You by Adele. Goosebumps! Now, I think I’ll add a Twilight re-read to the list of things that help me remember her - it’s worth the sting.