Watching a pixie-haired Dakota Fanning slowly die of leukemia in Now Is Good, I realized how I'm inclined to like books and movies that feature hopeless romances, dysfunctional lovers, and death. For some weird reason, I find beauty in pain and lacrimation. I've watched Celine and Jesse spend a perfect day together, knowing they will have to part in the end. I've read about A and Rhiannon's painfully unconventional love story that does not end as planned. And to be perfectly honest, the only books by John Green that I've truly enjoyed are the ones where one of the protagonists die. I don't know what to make of this realization, but I bet there's more to it than just my sick obsession for emotional turmoil.
After giving it some thought, I've come to conclude that my affinity for their unfortunate circumstance might be due to the fact that they feel more "real" than others. As Augustus Waters would put it, life is not a wish-granting factory. In real life, nobody has it easy, and everyone ends up dead. This explains why even as much as I love fairy tales, I find some books and movies with happy endings to be off-putting. When the pretty white girl conveniently gets her way and lives happily ever after with the unbelievably hot guy, I find myself rolling my eyes. I prefer watching a perfect match not end up with each other, or a clever young girl fall for an emotionally disturbed fella. Something about their hopelessness is just so beautiful. I don't know what that says about me, but I do think that the best stories are the ones that hurt. The ones that cause you pain because you know there was something so beautiful that didn't last—not because they didn't want to, but because it just wasn't meant to.
“My dear," Rose said, "you might be surprised at how much happiness you can find in the pages of the shortest love stories."
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