When the bestie (Bianca) and I saw Crimson Peak on Saturday night, most of the trailers were kind of well… blah. Except of course for the Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer that was packaged with the movie. (The one embedded above!)

That wasn’t blah at all.

I teared up so hard at that trailer that Bianca totally could have used best friend privileges to mock me. It was that intense and embarrassing.

It’s weird how for something I only got into within the past decade (as opposed to cutting my nerd teeth on it from the day I figured out what a television was), thinking about Star Wars just makes me so happy. I mentioned before how I didn’t really grow up as someone that was into these major nerd film franchises so my intense Star Wars feels took even me by surprise. I grew up in an intensely religious household in the Caribbean and my mother monitored everything I watched or listened to — not so much what I read.

So I didn’t grow up watching nerdy things, I was a reader. (In fact, I was exposed to the Star Wars Extended Universe years before I saw my first film in the franchise.)

But once I saw it, I have to admit that I was hooked even though the series was done by the time I got into it.

So for The Force Awakens, it’s all of the fanperson-ing I missed out on because I was sheltered or didn’t exist back when the films were out is just about to bubble up. Do you know how much merch I’ve gotten in the past few months alone — and from my mother at that? (Like my mom is a huge freaking nerd about this series that even before I knew about Force Friday and the toy releases, she was planning to hop in the lines at Toys R Us and Walmar.)

Like I have action figures.

Funko POPs.

Posters.

I’m even considering a foray into fanfiction because it’s a franchise almost as old as my big sister so there must be some really interesting stuff out there.

And yet most people that I know don’t know that I’m a shameless nerd for Star Wars.

I have no idea why or how that happened —

Maybe it’s because I don’t yet feel comfortable as a fan. I’m a newbie still and it’s still kind of weird to call myself a fan when talking about it to other fans. (No idea why as I’ve been calling myself a comic fan since I started reading them as a kidlet and that was ages ago.) For the most part though, this is my actual secret nerd shame.

Like I’ve liked some weird things before and I don’t talk about them that much (like my thing for Wildstorm’s Stormwatch and The Authority series) where they’re outright problematic faves.

How is it that one of the most popular nerd franchises is something that most of my friends don’t even know I’m interested in?

Weird…

But I’ve resolved to be more open about this nerdy thing because let’s be real — There are worse things that I could be into and Star Wars (especially with how the new movies are going to be more diverse and hopefully be better about ladies) is seriously a good thing for me to be into.