I was listening to the soundtrack of The Fault in Our Stars on the drive to Falmouth (it's about as close to the film as I think I can get) and it's quite frustratingly apt. I'm sure it works wonderfully for the film. It is a flawless combination of songs for when you're newly twitterpated, songs there just for the joys of expressing life, and sad, sad songs, for when your heart is broken and it feels like nothing will ever be good again. T-Shirt by Birdy is such a pretty little ditty, and I know I can relate to every lyric, and it makes me so happy and so sad at the same time, because I don't think I'll ever have that feeling again. A reader sent me a comment the other day begging me not to withdraw myself from the idea of falling in love again or ever knowing what it might be like to have someone be in love with me (the only love I've been in has been unreciprocated), and I had to explain that I just can't. It makes me sad, of course, unbearably so, but I absolutely fail to see how it could be possible for someone to even begin to consider the prospect of starting a relationship with me, let alone allow themselves to then fall for me. It's not that I have low self-esteem - I am fully aware that I am completely awesome and any man would be lucky to be with me. It's that my body is going to abruptly fail me irresolutely, and it doesn't work brilliantly at the best of times. And why would somebody, given the choice between me and my body, and any other girl in the world who is much more likely to break your heart while staying alive rather than do it by dying on you, pick me?

And if by some stroke of pure stupidity, someone did fall for me, they'd have to work seriously hard to persuade me that it would be a good idea for me to get involved. Because either you'll get sick of me and want to leave which'll wreck me completely, or I'll die and devastate you. Who wins in that situation?

That is the one thing I think that John Green got right. I am like a grenade, a ticking time bomb, and I could never be with someone, allow myself to love them and for them to love me, knowing that I am going to detonate and completely obliterate everything at any moment. I could not cope with that on my conscience every day. So I will sit on the sidelines, watch friends love and marry and have children, and I will be happy for them because it'll be beautiful. But I won't participate. No one will take my hand, put their arms around my waist, tell me I'm exquisite even when my face resembles the moon and I feel drained of any speck of humanity or beauty I had left. That is just how it has to be.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM60hSMqIkI]