Chapter XXIV, where Adele - oh, wait, you'll figure it out by yourself

Have you ever noticed how people are drawn to know about how miserable other people are, and how they always sympathize with them when they're sad and lonely and drinking heavily and sleeping for 12 hours straight so they can try and escape reality for a bit and then, when they're happy and turn their lives around so they can actually smile and laugh at least once a day they just go 'Oh, yeah, right. Listen, I gotta go now. We'll catch up later, I guess'?

I hate that.

Take movies or books (or blogs). I'm now reading A long way down. All characters in the book are either too unhappy or depressed they just want to jump off a builiding and get over with their lives on New Year's Eve. But then, of course, they don't, or there wouldn't be much of a story there, unless Hornby chose to write about ghosts and how people don't really die and how God blahblah and stuff (and it wouldn't be a Hornby book if he did). Anyway, these characters, they're all f***ed up and I can't wait to get to the end of the book so I know they get better and don't feel that way anymore. But I'm guessing there's where the story ends.

(I was reading it the other day on the subway, on my way home, and laughed out loud at it. Quite embarrassing. No, there's nothing funny about people wanting to kill themselves. You have to read it to understand.)

Or if you watch a chick flick like French Kiss (but I bet you didn't, you James and you Redclay, my two readers, because you're guys) and just see a girl who got dumped and is now humiliating herself to get her fiancé back and this guy who's screwed up way too much in his life and you spend 2 hours thinking 'of course they'll fall in love and everything's gonna be fine', because there's the point of watching a movie like that. And when they finally do, you see the credits rolling.

I hate how we can't stand people being happy around us and how we think we are good people but we're not. I hate it how we don't really share the good stuff. So I'm thinking: mmm, maybe a good friend is a person who can actually feel good about your feeling good. Not the other way around. As cheesy as it sounds.

I wish I had said something clever instead of this. But, oh well.

P.S. And of course there are stories where people are miserable and everyone's bad and there's no way to change it and you read them or see them on the screen and you cry a lot and you think there's no reason to live anymore if that's how life is. Like Dancer in the dark, for example. But I'm not talking about these. Not now.