Particularly what we call sad books, or emo books. If you have not watched The Fault in Our Stars, please do not proceed as this post is mostly inspired by the movie, don't blame me for spoilers.
I love words. I love words for how they make me feel even when I do not totally get the perfect context in which it can be used. For example, I believe "serendipity" shares the same meaning with "epiphany" - which many will disagree and I might be an ignorant (bliss-ed one at that) fool for ignoring meaning...but isn't language invented for us to give meaning, which means that we do get to define it? I believe that is semantics? Don't correct me if I'm wrong, allow me this chance to be at ignorance's bliss.
Okay, back to books. My top 3 favourite love stories of all time that appeals to the anima in me, all share a common thread - they all don't have the typical happy ending. One Day someone dies, living with cancer is exactly The Fault in Our Stars and if we ended up with someone else than the person we once love, we would probably ask If You Could See Me Now. /wink wink
But they reflect life, or rather my perspective of life for in Mitch Albom's words, "The truth is, once you learn how to die, you learn how to live." Elisabeth Kubhler-Ross has some great quotes on grieving too. It's not so much of dying or loss that I'm interested in but the journey that people go through when death or loss is an imminent reality to them. It could be perceived, it could be real but you cannot unknow death nor loss nor the chances of that happening. Because I'm a person who is naturally risk-averse, the living human part of me feels the courage from reading these journeys. And to be fair, the only time I overuse the verb "feel" in my vocabulary is when I'm describing a book that has encapsulated me; me being a soul who has walked the periphery of the lives of who I am and who the book allows me or reminds me of.
So, on TFIOS, I've read it and while it's a big weepie, oh my God, John Green is good at stringing sentences. I'm the kind of reader who reads and reads into the meaning and the flow of sentences. And sentences that flow right, feels like a part of my soul being fed with comfort food. Stories like TFIOS inspire me to be witty and increase my affinity to words which leads to my tendency of trying to string pretty sentences and use bombastic words wherever inappropriate. Stories like TFIOS also remind me that it is not 'just a love story'. Heck, it's not about how two people love each other despite cancer and how sacrificial that is. From my point of view, it is about how people live by what they define themselves to be and how that spills over in every facet of their lives. Such as Hazel defining her life through cancer and while that makes her a witty, matured teenager, it also brought up the rebellious sides of wanting closure, expecting to be treated the way she has defined herself (a cancer patient) but also wanting the freedom, if anything, from herself to live a "normal life". Sure the love story part is damn sweet but that's just because all human beings need some level of connection and the best life experiences to live vicariously often come in the form of the story of some type of relationship.
On a more selfish level, these books that I love to read feeds the part of me that needs to feel reinforced that I'm also a witty, smart lady. Again, as I mentioned, there is a sudden rush of exhilaration after being with these stories that make me want to write something so amazing because I am so inspired. Inspired enough to write all this out without being fearful of the lack of correctness - because sometimes we all need to take risks. It is absolutely valid that this risk comes in the form of writing a long, partially incoherently thought out personal thoughts on books while attempting to minimize the amount of backspace frequency.
I love to read, it's one of the things I've always been grateful to be blessed with other than being able to swim. It's my alcohol, drug and all things that influence our dopamine center. Plus apparently it makes me more date-able (taken, oops!). I did not say that, please see this source. Nevermind that it is an Elite Daily article, haha. While it's exciting that I've lived a thousand lives, I do wonder if my partner feels the same - I do the overthinking bit quite a bit.
Now that I have finally done a word purge, the soul feels rested. I could do more I'm sure, but I'm guessing too much purging at once may lead to dehydration, and it's past midnight.
P.S. To the one who asked me whether you are now allowed to smoke, NO. And I would rather hear a thousand simple "I love you's" within our infinity than the nicely strung sentences in another's infinity - we will leave that to them.
