Random Introspection

I have come to a realization today. My brain is full of characters, my infatuations, my life, my thought processes all drowning in sketches of people and fleshed out personalities. Perhaps belatedly I have realized that, though I fiercely love strong women and mad geniuses, my favorite figure has tumbled out of medieval literature and continued to appear in most genres of entertainment. He is the 'Courtly Lover,' the one who suffers under the burden of a love which cannot be returned, and yet strives to be a better person for the sake of that love. There is something about that struggle which is so painful that it becomes almost inexpressibly beautiful. Something about it, when well executed, that chokes my breathing and makes my heart ache and does everything I ever wanted fiction to do to me.

( Geek breakdown of above )

The question is, however, why am I obsessed with the pain and the jagged hopeless hope of the courtly lover? Partially, I think I see myself in him, in his agony of unrequited love. Not for any particular person (at least right now). But I feel his pain in myself and take some strange pleasure in the constriction of my throat and heart that comes at the height of his anguish and hope for what he knows is unattainable. Maybe I feel the impossibility of his situation in my own.

Or maybe, I'm just a freak.

But "Sad is happy for deep people" and maybe pain can be lovely, too. There's a reason why this figure has stuck with storytelling for hundreds of years.

I think he's pretty anyway.