Do you enjoy happy endings?
Does a story where things work out in the end and that leaves you with a calming feeling in your stomach really catch you?
I feel as if sad, or even catastrophic endings have a much deeper impact an almost everyone of us. In classical literature, tragedies are so much more anticipated than comedies. And no, this was not just because humans were chronically unhappy before the modern era started.
Somehow these darkest stories just have a way to stick with us longer, I think.
Maybe, it‘s a sense of nostalgia.
When there was a very catastrophic ending to a story that had caught our full attention at some point, we remember the earlier parts with much more emotion and attention to detail, because these things fell apart.
Is that it? Are our brains just really torturing us like that?
I think mine does.
Thinking of books that left a trace on my soul, I can barely find those with a good ending. My bookshelf is heartbreak piled up.
When I asked that question recently, not just one person pointed out that those sad endings reflect reality better, but do they?
Is your reality and that of the people surrounding you in general the show down of “Romeo and Juliet”? Or has it more gray areas, and not always the absolute disaster in the end?
I don‘t think that sad endings are that realistic.
Real life is mostly a gray something we have to make sense of.
A heartbreaking ending to a wonderful story we loved is something else. It sets the soul in ways in which it cries out for a long while.
That does not mean that these catastrophic spirals do not exist in the real world, outside of books and plays. Of course, they happen. I have experienced them. Maybe that is another reason for me responding to these stories so much.
These spirals can give a soul direction whenever it loses hold.
It‘s as if the mind is set onto one thing, one need, one pain and all the other aspects of life are blurring away.
And really, I was known among my friends to always recommend those books and choose those movies or theater plays to watch that would leave us with a silent that hurts in the chest and stomach!
There is a before and after.
There is a warm and cold.
There is a thing and then the hole it left behind when it got lost.
Isn‘t that wonderful?
Very recently in my life, I thought I was part of just another absolute tragedy as I had witnessed them before in life, and my soul was getting ready. It thought in extremes, everything was just light or dark. It can be inspiring and overwhelming to view the world with such a clear mindset!
But I was wrong.
The tragedy has not come yet.
This little tale I became a part of ended well.
And for my witch?
At first, I thought of giving her a dark ending. As a witch, that seemed appropriate, right? She has to die in pain at some point?
By now, I more and more think of such a gray ending.
There will be loss and pain, and everything I always wanted in the witching novel.
But maybe, she will get away with another chance at life?
I think I am breaking my fascination with catastrophic endings here.
How exciting!
Mistress witch writes 