Single Entity

I have a growing desire to watch or read all the tragic romantic movies and books that didn't affect me as a young girl. Though it seems somewhat ironic to write this just before my birthday, I have found that with age and experience (mostly experience) comes a connection of emotion that I never expected. As someone who almost never cried as a child, and only rarely as a teenager, it's been a shock, the things that can make me cry now, especially when I know that they wouldn't have caused me to cry only a few years ago.

I thought of this today because I was reading a pretty damn bad romance novel that involved the killing of a dog (it was chasing sheep), and I had to put it down for a while, practically in tears. This made an impression because for years and years, the only book that had made me cry was James Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small, and the passing of an old and well-loved dog. I think it touched me then, and now, because I've had that experience. I held my dog as she died, and I've been there when my cats were put to sleep -- that was a pain that I understood.

What I didn't understand so much was the fear and knowledge that someday, I will say goodbye to everyone for the last time. It might not be years and years from now, but there is always a last goodbye, whether you know at the time that it is or not, and that is a painful and terrifying thing to process. I don't think I was exposed to it until high school, and I'm not sure it was real to me until I was practically in college, so that's almost 19 years of media that I may not have felt to the fullest.

It's a strange desire, because I don't particularly like to cry, and I have no desire to think about the future in the terms of last goodbyes, but I can't help but wonder what I might get out of things, what might make me cry, and what that might tell me about myself.