In 1992, I was five and my mom put it in to keep me entertained while she went to smoke weed with her friends (not as child-abusey) as it sounds.

I was in utter awe when the Star Destroyer screamed over the POV and that aural-awesomeness that is William's score boomed forth.

She came to watch it with me around the time Vader enters Leia's ship. I saw the man in black and my mother immediately answered the question in my mind: "that's Darth Vader."

"Dark Invader... Coooool..."

It captured my imagination like nothing before it. When I saw it, I had seen nothing like it before it. But everything I saw thereafter was exactly like it.

I saw Jedi that same year, but it wasn't as awesome. I dint get as into it, or really pay attention to its plot, so the nature of Han being frozen, Leia being dressed as a bounty hunter (I must have missed the kiss because I don't remember it), or what the hell Palpatine was supposed to be. For a long time, I thought Jedi was a direct sequel, not knowing Empire existed, except for one time my grandmother was flipping channels and it was on NBC. The mystery of the "other Star Wars movie" eluded me until...

I was seven or eight when I convinced my mother to rent the 1993 "difinitive edition" VHS collection, the versions of the films released before Lucas began the Special Edition project. It was the first time I ever binge-watched three movies one after the other.

Star Wars was still Star Wars, but I was confused by the "Episode IV: New Hope" subtitle. I asked my mom later what that meant and she told me that Lucas started the series halfway through and was planning on finishing it with something called "prequels."

This was the first time I would watch Empire in its entirety, and it became my favorite of the three, then (Star Wars is now my favorite).

Nothing...nothing prepared me to expect Vader's response to "he told me you killed him." Eight-year-old me was on the edge of my seat.

"No. I am your father." A movie had never blown my mind before, except maybe Jurassic Park which I saw when I was six.

And then Jedi made sense. And ended the trilogy so satisfactorily.

And Star Wars had a special place in my heart in all the years since. When I was ten, the Special Edition came out. My mom wanted nothing to do with it, though I didn't understand why, then. I got them on VHS the following Christmas, and I enjoyed hem well enough. Didn't quite understand what the fuss was about.

I was eleven-going-on-twelve when my mother's boyfriend and I went to see Lost In Space. I liked the movie well enough, but the standout event was the trailer for Episode I. I was...confused by some of the things I saw, such as a geisha chick, and Jesus telling Anakin to "drop," but got super excited when Satan ignited his double-goddamned-bladed lightsaber. Of course, I was like, "hells yeah."

But we never went to see it in theater, and I didn't know why my mother refused to take us. I know now.

I watched it on VHS when I was thirteen. And I was...nonplussed. I watched it several more times to figure out why the film made me feel so uncomfortable to watch. It was "like watching Power Rangers," I once told a friend, who concurred. Even the lightsaber battle felt...fake and uninteresting.

I simply didn't know how to describe my reaction to the film. My mother endured I child-me had a well-curated collection of films for me to watch, and I had never seen a bad film. I didn't know how to describe it.

The years after Episode I my best friend managed to get me back into Star Wars with this cool game called Shadows of the Empire, which introduced me to the Expanded Universe.

I was in high school, fifteen or sixteen when Episode II came out and was utterly uninterested. At that point, I had been questioning everything I knew about movies and had wondered if Star Wars was just cheesy schlock held up by nostalgia. Even when my best friend told me that the film had a spectacular saving grace: "Yoda..." I still refused to see it.

Episode III's theatrical run was when i was in boot camp. I remember some of the drill instructors talking about Anakin's injuries during a first aid class.

I had money enough for absurd dalliances of purchases, so I bought (because I'm an idiot) A DVD copy and watched it with my roommate. At that point, I just wanted to see what events put Anakin in the suit. I had still yet to see Episode II. I remember the acting was atrocious, and being very awestruck by the fact that Anakin and Padmé were married ("they ended up together!? He was so much younger than her..."). It was so boring and underwhelming. I didn't care about the characters, I just wanted to see the shitty things that would inevitably happen to them.

Some time later, I decided to just take a whiff and watch the last of "the six." I had never hated a film, but Clones managed to do it. It is to this day my least liked of the Star Wars films.

And from then on, it was cartoons and toys and terrible video games, tapering off into a dark age...

...

...

...

...

One day I was twenty-seven, and I saw the trailer for the Force Awakens.

I wasn't hyped... but something deep down was hyped.

I had been so jaded by trailer culture that I decided to avoid any future trailers. I would watch the movie, despite my cold cynicism. Something inside would not let Star Wars, something that had captured my imagination before becoming something hat made me question my very taste in movies...would get one last chance...

J.J. knocked it out of the fucking park.

And Awakens proved to me - once, and forever - that Star Wars deserves its place in history, Prequels be damned.

I am a fan, now and for all time.