Dear Carrie Fisher,

It feels strange to write to you like this. After all, I did not really know you by your true name. No, I, like millions of others knew you from the silver screen first. I didn’t watch the original Star Wars Trilogy until I was in high school. Like all teenagers, I was convinced that it would be too child-like, too unsophisticated. Somehow, you could take this fantastical premise and fill it with wonderment and imagination. You were our Princess, unlike any we had seen before. Leia may have been royalty, but she was also a rebel. When Han and Luke burst into her cell, she shows that she is more than able to hold her own in a fight, entirely usurping both Luke’s and the audience’s preconceptions. In the second and best movie of the trilogy, it is always the relationship between Leia and Han that captures my attention. It was a romance that didn’t apologize for its nostalgic charm, because your caustic vulnerability made it surprisingly refreshing. In the middle of an enormous galaxy, Leia was a beacon of defiance against both the Galactic Empire and stale Hollywood stereotypes.

I also remember where I was when I learned that you had passed. I had just woken up, but as I scanned my phone, I swore it was like I was still trapped in a nightmare. Some might say that it is silly to react this way to someone you only ever saw in the movie theater or on daytime talk shows. Frankly, I don’t care. I am not sure you would either. After all, you had an acute sense of the power of celebrity. You never sought the spotlight, instead it effortlessly chased you. That is what made it especially special when you did choose to embrace the bright lights. You brought awareness to social issues by willingly exposing your personal struggles with drugs and mental illness. There are so many celebrities that seem to chase fame crassly. You managed to achieve a universal presence in our lives, just by being yourself. Your honesty was always impossible to ignore.

It was a very solemn breakfast that day. My sister and I had first watched Star Wars together. We even started a new tradition two years ago, of going to the theater to watch every new release together. We didn’t eat much that day preferring to talk. There was a surreal quality to that conversation, to that entire morning. After all, memorializing the dead is always a difficult task. Everything fades too quickly, flickering like a mirage in front of our eyes. Everything feels transitory, as if I could blink this reality away and exchange it for another. I guess that is why I’m writing to you still. I hope that you knew how much you meant to all of us. I hope that it wasn’t painful. I know you are in a better place now. Hopefully, we will meet again, in a galaxy far, far away.

Sincerely,

Corrina Lee