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(This first. Listen to the clar­ity of the lower octave notes that Regina adds in waves and waves at the end of the cho­rus; you can tell it’s a qual­ity grand piano just from how those notes res­onate — an upright would sound much mud­dier at the low end. This is the song that plays on day (408) and it’s fuck­ing per­fect. Also, title from the lyrics.¹)

It would appear that some­one made a movie of my last rela­tion­ship, and (500) Days of Summer is to #8 as Eternal Sunshine was to #4. The inter­est­ing part is that it was released early last year, dur­ing the rela­tion­ship, and I won­der if it would have changed any­thing on my end, had I seen it then. And if she saw it now, would she under­stand things from my per­spec­tive? Or does she under­stand already? And if other peo­ple saw it, would they under­stand how one could unwit­tingly get their hopes up when things are so clear from the beginning?

I’m so glad Marc Webb, the direc­tor, treated the mate­r­ial with such grace. You can tell it was based on expe­ri­ence because the ten­der moments come from a real place (co-writer Scott Neustadter admit­ted Summer was based on a girl who “returned his kisses but not his ardor”). In an inter­view, Joseph Gordon-Levitt said, “I’ve had my heart bro­ken before. Truly, truly bro­ken. But when I look back at me in my heart­bro­ken phase, it’s pretty hilar­i­ous, because it felt so much more extreme than it really was. One of the things I love about (500) Days of Summer is that it doesn’t make light of what we go through in romances [empha­sis mine], but it is hon­est about it and shows it for what it is, which is often pro­foundly funny”, and I com­pletely agree. I also appre­ci­ate the fact that they don’t vil­lainize Summer because she never takes advan­tage of Tom², and at the same time, it doesn’t make the ago­niz­ing days he goes through any less sig­nif­i­cant or dif­fi­cult. In a pro­found way, it brings jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to every­thing I was (or am) going through. I sup­pose I’m just wait­ing for the punchline.

Hah.

Watching it has left me feel­ing emo­tion­ally dev­as­tated lately, almost as if I’ve regressed, and lost months of progress. John says it’s because see­ing it was like see­ing her again, reliv­ing the entire thing from day one, from when we had met in the office. Like a recov­er­ing alco­holic falling off the wagon and tak­ing his first sip in 5 years. That doesn’t mean I don’t appre­ci­ate the mes­sage, and as well as the rec­om­men­da­tion to watch the movie from Darren.

Even though I’ve tried to com­pletely for­get and move on, I’ve come to learn it’s not that easy. It’s almost as if you have to accept the all the mem­o­ries, both good and bad, as much as you accept your own qual­i­ties and flaws.

The days, months, years you spend with someone significant will inevitably change and shape you. To deny them is to deny yourself.

I found it fas­ci­nat­ing to trace the plot devel­op­ments to parts of my own story. The entries I’ve writ­ten over the last two years echo the sen­ti­ments so strik­ingly in dia­logue, songs, and voice-overs.

This is a story of boy meets girl. The boy, Tom Hansen, of Margate, New Jersey, grew up believ­ing that he’d never truly be happy until the day he met “the one”.

From my entry The Penultimate Letter — “My whole life, I looked for some­one like you. Someone who was capa­ble of rais­ing me to my poten­tial, some­one who was wor­thy of the love I have to offer. But even then, I never knew I was capa­ble of a love that res­onated so deeply in my person.”

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1. Or is it? [↑]
2. Ironically, the gen­der roles are reversed, and it’s Tom’s date who’s the voice of rea­son here. [↑]