Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

A lot of people have told me this is a good movie, but I never watched it, because I don't like Jim Carrey and never want to see any movie with him in it. But I finally saw it in a hostel in Melbourne, when I was waiting to use the telephone. I guess it's good that I didn't watch it when it first came out. Then I would probably felt it was just another “good movie”, but now I can really feel the deep emotions that I couldn’t relate to before.

In many ways, I’m quite similar to Joel Barish. He’s a pretty average person, living a pretty dull life. He’s quiet and socially awkward. He sits by himself at parties, can’t interact with other people very well, and prefer to keep most of his thoughts to himself. That describes me quite well (and probably many others). Because of this, I can really put myself in his shoes.

So if a procedure as described in the movie really existed, would I choose to go through the same treatment? Yes, I would. Even knowing it’s doing low-level brain damage, I would gladly do it, just to get rid of the pain. I can understand why Joel wanted the procedure done to him, because I can understand the pain he’s going through. You can’t sleep, you don’t feel like eating, you can’t do anything that you used to enjoy doing. It feels like the end of the world, nothing really matters anymore. Anything, anything is better than this. Anything to get rid of this pain.

Before I’ve seen the movie, I tried to do my version of the procedure without even realizing it, trying to erase her from my memory. I won’t write to her, won’t ever see her again. I want to forget her so the pain would stop. But I can’t forget, no matter how hard I tried. Memories can’t be erased that easily. I thought about getting rid of all her pictures (there are many), and everything she’s ever given to me.

But I didn’t.

In the movie, Joel finally realized that he didn’t want to loose the memories of Clementine as the procedure was underway, so he did his best to fight the procedure. He almost succeed. Almost.

Now, almost a month later for me, the pain has slowly went away, and I also realized that I don’t want to loose my memories. We’ve taken a lot of trips together: Seneca, Red Rocks, New River Gorge, Summersville, Red River Gorge, the Gunks, Squamish, Skaha, and Colorado. These were some of the happiest time of my life. Erasing those memories would mean that I’ll have nothing else left to remember. And I don’t want that.

The sharp pain of last month is just a dull ache now. With time, maybe it will go away completely. Or maybe not. It doesn’t matter now. I’ve started climbing again, started to do the things I used to enjoy, instead of just drowning myself in depression.

The movie has a (somewhat) happy ending, even with each others memories erased, Joel and Clementine still found each other. Maybe it’s according to the Hollywood formula that two people are always meant to be together. Whether Joel and Clementine can make their relationship work beyond the movie, that’s a different story.

In real life, it’s not always a happy ending. Two people don’t always end up together, no matter how right you think it is. But life goes on, a month later I realized, it only felt like the end of the world, but it isn't.

The pain will be forgotten, but you will not.