The Skeleton in My Closet is an Edward Cullen T-Shirt

The Twilight Saga changed me as a person.

Well, more specifically, the Twilight Saga: Eclipse. On an offensively hot summer day in Citrus Park, Florida, a 13-year-old me persuaded my dad, a bona fide horror and sci-fi buff, to buy us two tickets to Eclipse with the promise of bloody conflict between vampires and werewolves. I thank God every day that my dad, also a bona fide workaholic, didn't have time to keep up with the latest pop culture and thus did not even know what Twilight was.

Now you may ask: "Why didn't you see Twilight with your friends? Surely you knew a group of girls who were equally enthusiastic about Twilight as you were." And you'd be right! But here's the gag: I, a 7th grade girl, didn't want other 7th grade girls to know that I was empathically devoted to the love triangle between Bella, Edward and Jacob (Team Edward Forever).

By the time Eclipse was release, the books had just wrapped up and we were already two movies deep into the series. And with the movies and books and dollar came a barrage of (admittedly funny) SNL skits, stale quips about sparkly vampires,thousands of people ask why Kristen Stewart doesn't smile and assertions that Twilight was certified Hot Garbage, and anyone who liked Twilight was also certified Hot Garbage.

Now, as an adult who can simultaneously enjoy and criticize media, I just laugh and shrug. But to 2010 me - a teenage girl with the slight tendency to catastrophize everything - it felt like a punch in the gut.Every day I was told my hair wasn't straight enough, boobs weren't big enough, my skin was too dark, and now, on top of all of that, liking a cheesy romance (my bread and butter) made me an object of ridicule. Looking back, I realize how absolutely insane it is that our society views teenage girls as both sexual objects and objects of derision.

And so, I went to see Eclipse with my dad. And it was heaven.

I loved the pasty makeup and terrible lace front wigs. I loved the giant, CGI wolves. I loved how cold the theater was and the reclining seats. I loved Edward's proposal to Bella in the end, in their sunny meadow, blooming with wildflowers.

But what I loved most was the silence.

There was no one shouting in my ear to hate something that I enjoyed. All of the pressures of being a teen, having the right appearance and the right interests,had seemingly disappeared. No one in there with me was Hot Garbage for going to Sunday matinee of a Twilight movie. We were all just people, watching something simply because we wanted to.

In that theater, I realized a fundamental truth about the human condition: people from all walks of life can find refuge and community in one another through the strangest means. In that moment, I misidentified that connecting factor as the Twilight Series. But through years of movie watching, of Moonlight and Toy Story and Black Panther, I realized what actually has the power to make strangers to make strangers seem a little less strange.

It's film.