A Word on "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" Then...and Now

I remember the cold winter when I went to see "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" at the Kips Bay movie theater. The timing of the movie's release coincided, by design, with Valentine's Day 2004. In the film, Jim Carrey's "Joel" and Kate Winslet's "Clementine" are the guilty parties of a tumultuous relationship that ends very badly. In the movie's alternate reality, however, it is possible for a person to erase the entire recollection of another soul who has hurt them. This is done through a medical procedure that "maps out" the location of each of the memories you have of the estranged person, and methodically zaps them one by one as the patient sleeps . Impulsive Clementine is first to opt for the erasure of all her memory of Joel, and Joel in turn decides that his only recourse is to erase Clem as well. Joel does this, at first, out of what he deems to be retaliation but what is actually raw pain.

At the time this movie came out, I was 23 years old and I was going through the anguish of my own first heartbreak. Three months earlier I had (bravely, though I didn't give myself credit for it at the time) pushed my first love, Rick, for a "D.T.R." A "D.T.R." is an acronym that stands for "Define The Relationship".. in essence the term is a verb that's been turned into a noun. A DTR is the terrifying name for what occurs when one party of a nebulous relationship-like-arrangement has the courage to confront the other party for a more specific definition of what they are doing together...and what it should be called. To put it in simplest terms, a DTR is usually a call from one person to the other to "shit or get off the pot."

As I've already hinted, my DTR did not go well, at all. I remember sitting in Rick's Honda as he told me that he loved me, but wasn't *in* love with me, and I  was thinking "wow, so this is what it feels like: rejection...and unrequited love." In the years that have followed since that night, I've come to appreciate the courage it must have taken for Rick to be honest, but, my biggest issue with it at the time was the simple fact that I did not believe that he was not in love with me. Five years later, after Rick was already married, we saw each other from a distance at a street fair and the look on his face told me, after all that time had passed, that my instincts were correct. There are no doubt thousands of reasons why he and I are not supposed to be together: my pride, the plans God has for each of us, etc, etc. But back on Valentine's Day 2004 all I knew was this: he had hurt me badly...and I wanted him to hurt, too. The thought of him discovering that I'd erased all memory of him seemed like an ideal solution and in my youthful pain, I missed the point that the movie was trying to make.

This past weekend, I re-watched Eternal Sunshine for the first time in many many years. This time I of course also had the benefit of 8 more years of living and loving under my belt. It is also a particularly poignant time for me to have seen the movie again because 4 months ago I was left, hastily, by a man who had previously told me every day before that that he loved me. In the span of half an hour, Alan methodically and coldly dissolved our relationship as if it had been a business transaction that was no longer profitable for him. In the 120 some odd days that have followed, I've battled intensely to regain my self worth, my belief that I'm attractive, and to repair my badly broken ability to trust another soul. There have been many times that I've wanted to "erase" Alan from my memory, but unlike Clem and Joel, I cannot bid Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood to come into my apartment to zap these images while I sleep.

In seeing this movie again, however, I was struck by the journey that Joel takes through his own mind, as he travels backwards through his memories of Clem. It is as if he's hit rewind. His most recent memories of her are of course bitter and abrasive. As they near the end of their relationship, Clem and Joel are ugly to each other, and it's frankly hard to watch. As Joel is brought further and further back into his memories with Clem, the "temperature" slowly changes on the things that he remembers, and when he finally comes upon their most recent tender memory together he suddenly begs "Please. Let me keep this one." The remainder of the movie is a cerebral voyage as Joel's subconscious engages Clem's subconscious in a struggle to hide Clem in his mind, in a passionate struggle to save his memory of her. It does not work, however. When they both wake up, with no recollection of one another, they are drawn to each other once again. Joel and Clem re-meet and they get what so many of us wish we could have: a truly fresh start.

While the kind of fresh start that Joel and Clem experience is not possible for us, the ultimate lesson of the movie finally clanged me over the head. The lesson is that when it comes to people we've loved who have hurt us, the ability to travel "backwards" through our memories of them until we reach the memories that were Good...where we gave and received pure love...that ability exists within us all the time. The question becomes whether we can get past the pain of the fact that we "know how the story ended," wading through all that bile before we get to the moments where we soared together. If there is anything to be learned here, it's this: the love that we give another is never a mistake. It warrants repeating: the love I have given to another has never been a mistake.

The other, albeit somewhat 'new-agey' lesson of the film that I strongly believe is that there are a select few with whom we bear a connection that transcends light and sound. Though I now know that Rick and I are not supposed to be together, I still send him light and love often and I know he sends it back to me because of this simple fact: I can Feel It. In my dreams, Alan comes to me sometimes to apologize, and that has brought me a great deal closer to bestowing the forgiveness toward him that I need to for my own sake. Though our minds can never be Spotless, we can choose to face the sun by consciously selecting what we choose to remember. And that will make all the difference.