500 days of summer

I just finished watching 500 Days of Summer, the new cute hipster romance movie. You know, like Garden State was, and then Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist was. As soon as I got out of it, I was like "Holy God, I need to blog." I don't know if that's because I don't have any friends who I can blab endlessly about a movie to, or if I'm addicted to blogging, or what. It's something though, and it's probably unhealthy.

Let me preface this by saying it really is a great movie. More movies should be like this movie. It's well-acted, even if Joseph Gordon-Levitt doesn't really know how to open his mouth, anything that Zooey Deschanel touches turns to a sapphire-y blue beautiful sky explosion of wonder, and the music is awesome! The music is awesome also because unlike Garden State, I actually knew most of the songs before buying the soundtrack!! I have indie cred!! And my indie cred just went down now that I've confessed to liking something relatively mainstream and popular. Aww, shucks. I'll just have to grow an ironic mustache. Truth be told, I think what I liked most about this movie was how realistic it was.

What I hated about this movie was how realistic it was. At this point, if you haven't seen it and are concerned with spoilers, you should stop reading. Stop reading now. Now. I'll even give you a few lines to decide if you really want to stop reading. Seriously, if you care about the plot details, you should stop. Why can't you stop? My writing really is that good, huh? Thank you, thank you so much. You mean the world to me. Stop reading, though. But come back and read it after you've seen the movie!

It's realistic, AKA it's a love story about what love is really like, broken down phenomenally in the scene where Tom (Joseph "Can't-Open-My-Mouf" Gordon "3rd Rock From the Sun" Levitt) quits his job for working at a greeting card company that is just helping to aid the massive group of people who don't know how to adequately describe their feelings so they have to resort to greeting cards, or pop songs, or movies. The lovers don't end up together, it questions if love really is destiny, it actually questions love - like, asks the questions you've found yourself asking in bed at night when you can't decide if you should call after a big fight. I liked this because basically, in a nutshell, I am Tom. I identified with that sappy motherfucker who believed love was found in 'the one,' and that love conquered all, and that love was wonderful all the time, la la la would you like a sunflower?

From the minute he fell in love with Summer (Zooey Deschanel), I knew where it was going. Except, I didn't. Because, true to my optimistic-borderline-crazy form, I thought that maybe they'd work out. I thought, even though I know they're not going to end up together, they're going to end up together. This is what I mean when I say I'm crazy. Summer has walls up, Summer will never concede her independence to actually be in a "relationship" with someone and label it as such, Summer won't say "I love you." Summer only says "I like you," in a cute voice that's totally irresistible. And Summer will be incredibly charming, stunningly beautiful, and everything you could want in someone - except she's someone who never gave enough, because she never felt enough.

As I sat through the movie, watching the romance unfold and ultimately, unravel, I couldn't help but remember my 500 days of summer. Some of the lines were taken word-for-word, exactly out of events in my life. "Wes, you're only remembering the good stuff." Well-meaning friends, trying to get me to see that although the love I felt for him was real, he wasn't giving it to me. And then, just like in the movie, there was the moment when the walls seemed to break down, when Summer confesses things she's never told anyone, and things seem to take off again - only to crash and burn later.

Truthfully, it was hard to watch. I definitely cried at times, and it wasn't an overwhelmingly sad movie. I cried because I was sad, though. And I was sad because I felt like someone out there understood what my situation was like, what my feelings were like, and validated them. You'd think I'd be happy to be validated, but there's so much that was lost. For so long, I was told that I was crazy, or annoying, or stupid for the way I felt, or the way I viewed love and the relationship. In some cases, I was. In other cases, my feelings were valid, the frustrations I had dating someone who wouldn't give in completely to me were real and they made sense.

It makes sense because I know that I wasn't really, truly, genuinely loved back. At the very least, the love felt by him was not comparable to the love I felt. In some ways, that's a hard pill to swallow. To think of the time and energy and memories made, and how some of it was built on a facade. In other ways, it's freeing. Knowledge, whether gained through time or experience, can be empowering. It helps to know, now, what I didn't know then.

There are times when I do genuinely wonder, because of my hapless romanticness, if the love I'll inevitably give someone will be returned with the same magnitude felt by me. I feel a lot, and I know that this world makes it hard for us to feel a lot, and sometimes punishes us for sharing our feelings. I know now that love isn't always the fantasy we expect it to be, and in a way, I crave being able to have another relationship where that knowledge is incorporated. It's hard to see myself in the role of a Summer, someone who just makes people fall in love with them. I feel like I'll always see myself as the Tom, someone who falls in love. I just hope that when I do fall in love again, the next person feels it in their own way. And I hope they're not afraid to say it.