How Star Wars Changed my Life

I still remember the first time I saw A New Hope. I must have been around 10 or 11 and my father popped it into the VCR, I remember that I didn’t really want to watch it, at that time I was far more into cartoons than live action movies. But within a few minutes, all of that changed. From that moment I was a Star Wars fan for life. I remember begging him to watch all three movies in one night, I didn’t care that it was a school night I needed to know what happened! But he was adamant, we would watch one movie a night and that’s exactly what we did. For those three days, I lived for the time Star Wars would be put on so I could find out what happened. I loved Star Wars back then but I could have imagined how Star Wars changed my life.

How Star Wars Changed my Life

I loved StarWars, I still love StarWars…but I would never have imagined how this would lead me to the life I have now. For the longest time I thought horses would impact my life the most and for a while they did. My StarWars love was still there but it took a backseat to my other loves in life. It wasn’t until I was older that StarWars beckoned me once again.

Online Friendships

I found myself on the Forums at StarWars.com. These forums became my online home away from home. When I wasn’t working, or at the barn, I was online chatting with forum friends. Before long chatting on the forums became chatting in messengers. We were all huge Star Wars fans and as a group could spend hours discussing the books, the games, the characters, the setting. It didn’t really matter if it was Star Wars related we talked about it.

Of course, when you spend that much time with people connections form. It was inevitable that we would branch off and talk about our lives and our troubles as friends are prone to do. For several years the group was strong both on the forums and in messengers.

Somewhere along the way, other feelings began to evolve between myself and another. I know, we’ve all heard the warnings. You never know who someone really is online, you can’t trust anyone. I get it and I admit I will probably even give my children the same warnings when they are old enough to go online.

Something More?

But this was different – and I know everyone always says that too – but I was friends with this group for years. None of us started talking with the end goal of falling in love. We were drawn by our love of a fandom and friendship blossomed long before anything else was even thought of. None the less I did fall in love.

It was difficult at first, we lived far away from one another and spending time together was hard. Eventually, the long distance was too much and something had to give. I chose to move to be with him and it was hard but worth it. We have been married now for 10 years and have two beautiful daughters. My oldest daughter is named after another friend from the same old group. And that group is still around, we might not talk every day like we used to but we keep up with one another.

Without Star Wars, my life would have been vastly different. Star Wars changed my life and led me to a happy marriage and children.  I will be forever grateful to the fandom for that even as I marvel at the many twistings of fate that had to happen in order to make it so. I never used to believe in fate but sometimes when I think about how things worked out I can’t help but wonder. Maybe it does exist.

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