Don't Watch Sad Movies Alone

Last night I watched A Home at the End of the World, a movie Jenny had recommended. I was a bit stressed because mock trial is already falling apart and with fall break upon us, I know I'm not going to get as much done this weekend as I need to. Thus, I thought a movie was a good idea. I was wrong. But, to my credit, I didn't know the movie was going to confirm my lingering suspicion that no matter what you do in life, you always end up sad and alone.

You see, the main character's life sucks. When he, Bobby, was nine, his hero, his older brother ran through a sliding glass door and slit his throat. In front of Bobby no less. Before he finished high school, both his parents had died. And then, after he's been taken in by Jonathan, his best friend, Jonathan ends up moving off to college in NY and Jonathan's parents move to the West Coast and don't take Bobby with them. Bobby eventually moves in with Jonathan again, but by the end of the movie, he has been abandoned by his lover, Clare (who also took their baby), and Jonathan is dying of AIDS (he so happened to be a sexually confused youth who turned out to be a gay man who went on promiscous rampages because he was mad at Bobby and Clare for being together, yada yada, weird love triangle, hard to explain).

So, now that the overly convoluted explanation of the plot is out of the way, what am I getting at? It only takes two scenes from this movie to really get it:

A) Bobby and Clare are talking while changing their baby's diaper.
Clare: You're amazing. You can do anything, can't you? You could probably move to the Sahara, build a house, and just live. It doesn't matter to you where you are. Is there anything you can't do?
Bobby: *thinks* I can't be alone.
Clare: No. I don't suppose you can.

B) Final scene of the movie. Bobby and Jonathan have just spread Jonathan's father's ashes and are walking back to their house.
Friend: You know, this place will be fine for my ashes too. You've built us a nice home out here.
The idea being that after everything he's been through, everything he's tried, all the people he's loved, Bobby is just going to end up alone. All alone. The one way he can't be.

And so I finished watching the movie. Sat crying in my room in the dark. Told myself I was stupid. Started crying again. And realized that, in a lot of ways, we're all kind of like Bobby. We try and we try and we try to find happiness. And if you think about the ways we try to find happiness, they're highly related to our relationships with other people. But in the end we can't make our Clares stay if they want to go. And we can't keep our Jonathans alive if they're dying from diseases with no known cures. I wish I could say something inspiring, perhaps something involving the Goddess Fortuna, but I'm really just falling back on one simple theme:

Life is one big over-rated exercise in futility.

If you'll excuse me, I have water to tread.