Time and tide, love, time and tide

All I've done this summer that's worth mentioning is read. Ever since I was a little kid, I loved summer because of the time I had to myself. As much as I love school and going back to school, that eventually wears on me just as the end of summer does. What gets me through it are the books I read and things I learn. In the summer, my life is filled with a different kind of thought and feeling than during the school year. It's a kind of imaginative wishfulness that magnifies all of my emotions, from romanticism to meanness. In the summer I fall more deeply in love with those I care about and become more intensely disillusioned with the things that make me angry.
Perhaps the state in which I am when I read a book or see a movie determines how I remember it later and how it affects me. I know there are a lot of people who don't read and a lot more who simply watch movies for entertainment. While it may sound a bit presumptuous, I've always thought that I was affected rather differently by stories than those around me. My father is the same way and he gets the same kinds of reactions from people that I do when we speak without first being careful to not sound too weird. Even those who know me best aren't allowed to read most of what I write (and, believe me, it will never find its way onto this blog either). On the occasions when I do tell someone the truth about how I feel about something I get one of two standard reactions: a laugh and the assertion that I'm weird or misunderstanding and a refusal to accept my view.
I realized today that my favorite stories are the ones in which those who belong together do not end up together. Stories I love and you all know, such as Harry Potter and The Nightmare Before Christmas, take a backseat to those that I will never stop loving. Edward Scissorhands, Dune, the His Dark Materials trilogy, the real Little Mermaid fairytale, the Rose Elf fairytale, Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet and so many others will be my favorites for as long as I live. These stories have an astonishing power that not many others have. Everytime I read or watch them, I feel a different way. One time I might cry, the next laugh, the next sink into a depression, and yet another time I might get some strange motivation to go out and do things.
The common link in those stories is their fairytale-like nature. There are undercurrents to the obvious story that have more meaning and implication than just the words or pictures themselves. There is a journey, there are lessons learned, there is a clear hero and a distinct bad guy. Above all, there is an earth-shaking, time-ending love. The hero or heroine feels a love that, whether unrequited or returned with the same passion and fervor, they can never truly be free of nor can they ever truly feel the fullness of. The lovers, at the culmination of these stories, never end up together in a satisfactory way (though their love never wanes).

I wonder often if my fascination with unsatisfactory but final endings to the world's greatest romances has made me cynical about my own heart.