stories that you like

i've recently realized that my maternal family, mother and aunts, have a deep penchant or significant preference or uncommon affectation towards sad stories with unhappy endings and misbegotten intentions and tortured souls and regret and so on.

i am troubled.

growing up, the constant occupation with tragic news headlines or sad stories from neighbors, loved ones, (or hated ones, even better) never struck me as strange...

but now, now, when i receive calls of suchs news, relayed with a casual, satisfied knowingness but a touch of precarious fear nonetheless, i am struck by their frequency and the twisted joy in their delivery...

rought down on me with the heavy, weighted 'truths,' of people facing their mortality, 'jammie, one thing ma ah go tell yuh, one thing is don't waste yuh life!'

even romantic pragmatic cliches drop like lead, 'yuh know 'what happens to a dream deffered'?' langston would reel, would he not?

i do.

i find i prefer happy stories, novels that end with a sense of completion, films that allude to the continued existence of scenes, tales that teach but do not torture their characters... some sense of closure without impending doom.

i wonder what that means? what generational shift or change in geography, citizenship, class has created this rupture? what could be done to change their obsession? if it should change? if i am merely young and naive and age will transform my desire for a happy ending into a bitter realization of its impossibility?