A Pink Beginning
I should warn you, I’m not an incredibly good player, and I love mesmers for two main reasons. One of them is purely “aesthetic”: I love the “trickery”-type magic, I love how their armor looks, and the fact that their powers are frequently associated with telepathy only helps. 
I’m also the kind of player who enjoys doing damage via conditions and “chaining” attacks in certain ways. So yeah, I’m biased.
After watching the class videos the Mesmer looks very interesting and unique. I’m not afraid to die, I’m not easily frustrated and I’m willing to learn.
Honestly, I have to admit—that is good if you want to play a mesmer. I pretty much only play PvE (and I generally solo areas), and my mesmer dies pretty easily. One thing I’ve learned to try to prevent that is you want to try to maintain clones and phantasms as much as possible—they’ll frequently attract the attention of whatever you’re fighting, so you don’t have to take the damage directly. This gets a LOT easier when you’re a later level, though, since you’ll have a lot more illusion-generating skills. (This tactic also only works so well against multiple enemies, so you should try to aggro them one at a time if possible.)
One weapon I’ve found which is REALLY useful is a staff. It gives you an ability which creates a clone and teleports you backwards (very useful if you run up against something with powerful melee attacks!), a phantasm which inflicts conditions, a shielding ability, and an area affect which inflicts conditions on enemies and grants boons to allies. I think it’s the most well-rounded weapon for mesmers, and I found it very useful when I was first leveling up (though it’s been a while since then).
I hope this is helpful! 