TA TALKS BACK: FALLING IN LOVE FOR THE FIRST TIME, ALL OVER AGAIN
TA fan Theresa tells us about falling in love for the first time…:
The scene: a high school biology classroom. A boy and girl sit at a black-topped lab table. He has tousled, unruly hair, and the most beautiful eyes she’s ever seen. At turns moody and charming, witty and dark, he mutters sarcastic comments under his breath, but then looks at her sideways and flashes a crooked grin that stops her breath and melts her heart. She doesn’t know it yet, but he’ll change her life in more ways than she could even dare to imagine. She’s falling in love.So began my sophomore year in high school.
Imagine my surprise at meeting that boy again, sixteen years later at 36,000 feet, in the pages of a black-covered book on a flight from Chicago to San Francisco. I was several chapters in, grinning to beat the band and wondering if my fellow passengers thought I might be a little crazy, when the realization started to dawn on me: I knew Edward. Not only was I falling in love with Edward Cullen right there on the plane, I had fallen in love with my Edward the exact same way all those years ago.
In that instant it all came flooding back: the joy and fear, the pure exhilaration and intense self-uncertainty, the intoxication and insanity of first love. Emotions that I remembered having but thought I’d never experience again were brought to the surface, and with a vengeance. At 31 I wasn’t exactly expecting to be feeling like my 15-year-old self again. As the plane started its descent I was only halfway through, having spent several hours immersed in the Twilight/high-school-me world. I was emerging from the meadow with Edward, remembering all the parallel experiences I had had with my Edward, and considering whether Stephenie Meyer had been stalking me.
Since I was in San Francisco for work, I found myself wondering how I was going to make it through the coming days at the office without seeming like a love-drunk teenager. It’s a good thing we have a laid-back atmosphere at my office, because I was woefully unsuccessful. I was as giddy as I could be, and prattled on to anyone who would listen about this fabulous book I was reading about a sparkly teenage vampire and the girl who loves him. But in my head and in my heart, I was somewhere else completely.
I forbid myself to read any more of it before the return trip, as I could barely hold it together as it was. Even being used to my normal semi-obsessive behavior patterns, more than one of my co-workers had concerned looks on their faces after the second, third, or fourth explosion of girlish delight over this story and its main character. Suddenly everything related to Edward, just like everything related to my Edward when I was 15. But when you’re 15, it’s understandable; when you’re a multiple of 15, not so much.
I have never been so happy to be in an airport, suffering through the security checkpoints, and settling into an over-crowded plane as I was on that return trip. I had four and a half hours of uninterrupted time, and I knew how lovely that time with Edward was going to be, because I had already lived it. Miles flew by as I grew more infatuated, fell deeper in love, and remembered more and more what it was like to be me back then. Back when I was Bella, and my crazy-hot biology lab partner spoke in riddles, drove too fast, made fun of my aging pick-up truck, and drug me out into the woods for emotionally-charged conversations where we put our hearts on the line.
I finished with a little time to spare, so I did the only thing I knew to do, the same thing I did back then. iPod in hand, I turned to the songs that had gotten me through young love before. I arrived home, raving this time to my friends about the sparkly vampire, but my nerves were wound tight with feelings from the past. In my head, the familiar refrain of Jewel’s “Near You Always” had never rung more true.
“Your hands are in my hair but my heart is in your teeth…”
So come on ladies: how many others are out there, fawning over Edward Cullen on the outside, but re-living their teenage loves on the inside? How closely does Edward resemble your Edward? And just how much Bella is in you?
Talk Back to us….what do you think?
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