I have been told that I tend to romanticize romance and, thus, have an unrealistic view on how romance actually works. And to be fair, if this is true, I come by it honestly.
I grew up in the era of rom-coms in which heart-sick lovers won the girl back through grand acts that involved boom boxes (look it up, kids) and power ballads. I believed — believed — any guy, even a ho-hum guy like me, could get any girl if the stars aligned just right and that there was always a possibility that alignment was just around a bend in the universe.
As a teenager, I lived for the summer romance, an experience in which I would meet an interesting young woman at an interesting place and we’d have interesting experiences and then be torn apart by the miles that came between us. And that actually happened to me!
As a 16-year-old, I started flirting with a girl I saw at Long Beach Island, New Jersey. Yes, I shamelessly used my toddler cousin as a prop to show just what a funny and interesting guy I was (chicks dig dudes with babies, evidently). And when she came up to me one evening after I strategically placed myself on the beach near where she was staying, she had this amazing accent because she was from Austria! Austria, my friends! Austria!
At the time, she was living in Pennsylvania, and after one amazing night on Long Beach Island in which we hung out well into the wee hours and sought shelter under a porch as a huge thunderstorm blew through, we went our separate ways and wrote letters with hopes of seeing each other again — until she moved to Paris Freaking France the next year.
Don’t tell me that my version of romance can’t happen.
The movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind turns 20 this year, and it’s one that has always been heart-wrenchingly painful for me to think about, let alone watch, especially over the past decade or so. Back when I first saw it, I fell in love with the love that Joel and Clem shared. Growing up, I pictured myself meeting a quirky, weird girl like Clem and falling in love. I was convinced I’d meet her at a book store and we’d be married and weird together.
Spoiler alert: The story involves the development of the relationship between boring Joel and quirky Clem and how they end up hurting each other in the end. Despite experiencing a powerful, emotional, amazing love, Joel is too boring for Clem and Clem is too unpredictable for Joel. They simply can’t be. And so they take advantage of an experimental technique that erases a person and all memories associated with that person completely from their memory.
The parts of the movie in which Joel struggles against the treatment he willingly subjected himself to is like a punch in the gut to me. It’s one thing to want to get rid of someone who it hurts to think about because she’s gone and won’t be coming back; it’s another thing to actually go through with the procedure that makes that happen.
I have thought often over the past several years about what I would do if such a technology existed. Would I wipe away the people who came into my life who I think about today with only a sharp pain in my heart? Would I rid myself of all the positive experiences we shared just so I wouldn’t have to feel the hurt of their ever-more absence? I have told myself I would, indeed. But like Joel, I imagine I would fight against it as it was happening.
Eternal Sunshine is different from your traditional rom-com in that there is definitely no happy ending. Beyond that, it’s very deeply human. When you listen to Joel and Clem talk, it’s not hard to think that these are real conversations real people would have. The two are genuine and relatable. They make mistakes. Lots of them. Mistakes we can understand because we’ve made them ourselves or we know someone who has.
Even when the story takes a sci-fi turn, it’s not a struggle between Joel and a robot or a machine. It’s a struggle between Joel and his own distrust and doubt and wondering.
At the end of the film, no matter how many times I watch it, I am left with the fact that no matter how many times Joel and Clem meet, no matter how many times they erase themselves from each other’s minds only to meet again, they are doomed to break each other’s hearts over and over and over again. No matter how brightly they burn, they always — always — will flame out.
But that doesn’t mean it’s a sad ending. Not necessarily. It’s not what Joel and Clem amount to that matters. It’s what they were in the moment. In that beautiful, wonderful, sensory-filled moment, they were exactly who each other needed. That they eventually will always be separated by their differences and the circumstances of their individual lives and personalities isn’t what matters.
Perhaps it’s that they always will end up hurting each other and always will end up erasing each other that what they share in the moment means so much more. You see the affection. You see the adoration. You see the love. And you also see the cracks, the brewing distrust, the approaching storm. Each time I watch it, I want to make it stop. No! Don’t say that! Don’t do that! Do leave! Don’t make that choice! Try the other option! It’ll be different this time!
But it won’t.
Joel and Clem are not meant to be together. Not here, anyway. And so they aren’t. That makes them profoundly human. They experience it all … the beauty, the heartache. And they go on. Not because they want to. Because they have to.
Which brings me back to my view of romance.
Without a doubt, my view of what a relationship could be is rooted in something shown in rom-coms and sung about in love songs. But if my view that things don’t have to be merely good and can actually be forevermore great is so skewed, why do those movies and songs exist? I think we all want great, and too many of us settle for good.
If we’re lucky, we’ll see the opportunity for great, and we’ll choose it. We’ll go after it. We’ll hold onto it so goddamn strong that it can’t possibly slip away.
We’ll nurture it. We’ll do our part. We’ll put in the effort. We’ll work on it.
Because if we don’t … if we let it slip through our fingers … then where are we? Are we wishing for the power to erase a person from our own minds, wondering if we would have the courage (or is it cowardice) to go through with it should such a thing ever exist?