There are a lot of things I want to say, and a lot of ways I thought about starting to say them, but I figured, I’ll start from the beginning.

I started crying when the opening fanfare started, after the screen shifted from the blue text reading “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” and into the enormous title letters. It wasn’t because I’m a super "Star Wars" fan or anything (that’s only partially a lie), nor was it because John Williams’s music typically makes me shed tears (again, I’m only lying a little), but because "The Force Awakens" is the first movie in the trilogy that I’ve had to experience without my dad.

A few months ago, I attended Bookcon, where there were several panels regarding the future of "Star Wars" comics and the franchise in book form. Maybe unsurprisingly, I sat in on a few of them, including one about three books that were based on the original trilogy and targeted towards middle school readers. Alexandra Bracken, who wrote the first of them — "Star Wars: A New Hope: The Princess, The Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy" — talked about her own relationship with the series, and about how, when she was younger, she would go to the toy store with her father to buy the action figures as they came out, and how they would read the novels together. It was starting to sound very familiar to me, because it felt a lot like my own relationship with "Star Wars" — inspired, mostly, by my father, who would sit my siblings and me down on the couch to watch the original trilogy in thirty minute pieces, because it sometimes took the place of "The Hobbit" as a bedtime story (they are both fantasy, after all). Hell, the first movie I saw in theatres was "The Phantom Menace."

But then Bracken also mentioned how her father passed away, and how, for a while after, she struggled going back to the thing she loved because it reminded her of him.

When my father died, I inherited his books. Most of them were "Star Wars" novels, and until I got back from that convention, they remained in a box because it was hard to look at them, and it was hard to be reminded of him.

I started crying in that panel, and then later on, back in my friend’s apartment, I cried more. A nerve I hadn’t realized was still raw had been struck, and I didn’t really know what to do.

With "The Force Awakens," I thought I knew what I was getting myself into. If a panel caught me so roughly in the gut with feelings, what would the actual movie do to me?

Writing this article feels a lot like writing another eulogy for my father. What can I say about the movie? Dad, you probably would have gotten irritated at small things. You probably would have been really irritated about the big things—but I think you would have gotten over them. In the same way that Bracken’s description of her "Star Wars" experience rang a few bells for me, there were a lot of scenes that probably would have felt like you had seen them before—but I think it probably would have been alright. I’m sorry that the last new "Star Wars" movie you had to see was "Revenge of the Sith," because this was so, so much better.

I sat in the middle of the theater and made my boyfriend wait with me until the end of the credits, not because I was reliving a tradition friends I used to have established, but because I didn’t know how to process what I watched. "The Force Awakens" is a fun movie. It’s good. I liked the characters, and I want to spend more time with them. There were a lot of parts that were ripped straight from "A New Hope," but then, I think, a lot of movies in the western/fantasy genre fall into the same trap, and it’s even harder to get away from nostalgic references in a return to an old classic. That lightsaber is an enormous plot hole and it was corny and could have been done better, or differently (we don’t always need to be handed the legacy, I think).

But I didn’t know how I felt, and I still don’t know how I feel about the movie. I cried where I was supposed to cry, but I don’t know if it’s because the scene was done well, or if because, like Luke, “I am a Jedi, like my father before me,” and it struck that same chord that Bracken did at Bookcon. There’s little way to discuss it outright without being too spoilery, and I know that a lot of people plan on seeing it as a Christmas gift, so I won’t say what happened. Based on the content of this article, I think if you’ve seen it, you’ll know, and if you think back to this after seeing it, you’ll also know.

Objectively, "The Force Awakens" is a good movie, but there are a lot of in-jokes and scene call-backs that you won’t get if you haven’t at least seen episode four. Subjectively? I’m still thinking. It might be a while before I can get back to you on that one.