I don’t like endings.
Of course, that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Even if you don’t know me that well, just go look up a random episode of Life Unedited; I’m not going to do the hard math, but I think there’s at least a 68% chance that my dislike of endings will crop up somewhere along the way.
I don’t like endings.
Of course, that’s not an entirely accurate statement. A more accurate one would be “Endings make me sad.” Sometimes, though it might seem odd to many, I enjoy that sadness. It satiates a deep-seated melancholia that permeates my psyche and drives me to chase after each new hit of sorrow. It is this unusual (and, some might say, unhealthy—though I beg to differ) appreciation of sadness that motivates my voracious reading, my binge watching, my rush to the final boss. Of course, these termini all reside in the realm of the fictional; their cessations cause no harm, and thus I feel free to savor them and all of their dolorous delights. As a fabrication, each of these stands ready to be restarted—brought back to the height of fictional glory—at a moment’s notice, with no cost but my time invested yet again.
I like those endings. I like those fictional endings. Facades.
But this is real life.
I don’t like endings.
No returned pages, no replay, no new save file can set that which has ended unto a new beginning. No, an ending is a seal; the missive of reality has been drafted, its edicts set, and the only future is to act out their demands. What has ended is gone.
It cannot be changed, it can only be evaluated. It cannot be experienced, it can only be remembered. It cannot be savored, it can only be sought; desperate grasp after desperate grasp strives for what once was.
Was. Not is.
The temporality of the copula has banished far too much into the aether of time. What once lived, breathed, acted, affected, welcomed, existed…
…doesn’t.
What once was real…
…isn’t.
It isn’t real.
It has exited reality.
But that means…
It is, in a bizarre sense, fiction. What once was woven so inextricably into the fabric of reality, in its ending, is born anew in the realm of story. It cannot be changed, but it can be embellished. It cannot be experienced, but it can be told. It cannot be savored…
No. It can be savored.
As the storytellers of time have passed down the exploits of heroes and monsters, so too can all that has ended be carried on and on and, beautifully, ever on. Surely not every mundanity of the human existence is worthy of falling into legend, but it all bears that same potential. The potential to be lived a hundred times over, so long as the storyteller is willing to share it—whether before an audience of hundreds or an audience of his own nostalgic mind.
So often, I tell the stories to my own nostalgic mind.
Memories.
Why do I always forget about the memories? That’s a delicious irony.
Maybe I was wrong. Perhaps an ending is not a death but a new life, devoid of the too limiting blinders called the rules of reality.
Endings make me sad.
But I do like endings. They set the future free.