500 Days of Summer

I was tired, but I was in the mood for a movie. It was past 11PM, and next morning I needed to leave the house at 10AM. I could afford a movie.

My art buddy had recommended "500 Days of Summer". I got it last week and now that she's here, I decided that it was the movie we'd watch. I was expecting some light, silly romantic movie. It was light in the sense that there's no twisted drama and emotional upheaval, at least not for the average member of the audience, I think. It's silly? A little. Boy meets girl, things happen, no one dies, no gunshots. What makes it not so silly, what makes it not so light, is that it mirrors a lot what I have been experiencing, what I have felt, thought, and tried to understand. Its ending is not Hollywood. No drama. Simply, things didn't work, and they aren't together. He doesn't really move on at the end either, but he would.

The story goes like this. Boy meets girl. He likes her. He's cautious. She wants to be friends. But then something shifts and she kisses him and they are together. "Together" in the sense they spend a lot of time together, they sleep together, even has sex in the shower together. But more than the physical intimacy, they share a lot of little romantic moments together. Her name is Summer, and about 300 days later she wants to be "real" friends now. He's devastated. She wants to meet with him, but as friends. And toward the end, about the 400th day, they accidentally meet on the train, they have a good time, they even danced at the wedding they were both going to, and she even invites him to a rooftop party of hers. His imagination gets the best of him, makes him believe they could get back together. But it is on the rooftop that he sees her engagement ring. She manages to meet someone and accepts a proposal and within the remaining 100 days of the movie, get married. This is the woman who says she can't imagine having a boyfriend, to be "someone's" anything. Now she's someone's wife. He's devastated even more than before the train meet. In his devastation he finally quits his job and pursues his career in architecture. And on the 500th day, he meets a woman.

I saw a lot of myself on the screen. Not an exact replica, but the crucial points. And from the movie I realized a few things about the errors I've made and those I thought might be mistakes were actually the right things to do.

I have met women, at least three, who have wanted to be close to me, or who ended up close to me, whether they "wanted" or not. What you want sometimes means much less than what you end up doing. What you tell yourself you want is even less meaningful. I have met these women who ended up being close to me, but always told me, told themselves, we were friends, at least not a couple, not together. They conveniently tried to erase the evidence from their minds that made things complicated, made them confront their own doubts.

In the movie, a crucial moment was that the boy was welcome to her apartment. And it was obvious that she didn't invite just any guy in. She had her walls. She had her internal barricades. And now she, brick by brick, chipped away the wall. And in bed, talking late into the night, she said those six magical words, "I've never told anyone this before." I've had that happen to me with these women. They had put down their walls. They told me things. They wanted to be my best friend knowing that was not a option beyond their weak fantasies.

I want to scream to Summer, scream to these women, the simple truth which I often had doubts about: if the man doesn't want to be your best friend, you can't make him, not anymore than him making you his girlfriend when you don't want to.

That's another point: labels. With all those women, I had trouble with labels. They all thought labels are silly. You don't need to call someone your girlfriend. It's enough to live the moment. I had a lot of struggle with this. I believe personally in living the moment, enjoying what you have. I remember all those conversations with these three women, being convinced by them, by my own cowardice, that it's childish to need a label, that being an adult means I can live the moment.

What I didn't realize until now is that I am letting them dictate what is good for me, that I was living in rules that were convenient for their cowardice. If I didn't care about labels either, that's fine. But it was clear from the beginning that I did, and I lied to myself that I didn't because I thought it was worth waiting for the woman of the moment to come around. And they never did. With the India girl and the French girl, I made it clear in the beginning that we weren't friends, and at least the India girl agreed that we were "dating", even if we weren't a couple.

When a woman opens up to me, convinces herself that she can't imagine her life without me, it doesn't mean she's any closer to giving me what I want, that simple label that actually does mean everything to them, that isn't just some childish rule. When she can't wear that label it's not because she's too mature, too modern to wear it, but rather, she's too afraid to be with someone she isn't 100% she wants to be with. People have the doubts in the beginning, and it was right for me to be patient with them and not force them to wear a label. But in the movie, after 300 days, it was quite clear she wasn't taking him seriously as a partner, but she did take him seriously as a friend knowing she wasn't giving him what he wanted. That's where it's all unfair.

And that's also where his fault lies, where my fault lied. I waited too long. My patience stretched beyond their elastic limit. It's not enough to blame these women for continuing to be with me as if we were a couple but refused to give me that label. It is my fault too not to leave them when it was abundantly clear that they weren't looking at any direction but that of a best friend. It was my own cowardice to linger and hold out that empty hope and not dare to face reality.

That Summer reminds me a lot of the India girl. Those big blue eyes, the slender coquettish body, and genuine smile, all combining to give an air of attractiveness much greater than what her looks alone would give. It is hard to resist those eyes, hard to not offer another day's excuse to linger and nurture the poisonous emptiness of a false hope.

The movie helped me put my rambled thoughts in visual form. I know what I need to do as part of desisting repetition of old habits. It's about self-confidence, of course. If a woman wants to be with me but can't carry the label I want, she has the right to, but I need the strength to move away. I deserve more than that. The India girl told me many times that I deserved someone who gave me what I wanted, and I lied to her and to myself that she was giving me what I wanted already. Life is too short for a gamble on what might not really be love.

What will this mean now for the French girl. I accompanied her to the airport. We connected. As with all the women in the past that I accompanied to the airport, best friends, ambiguous friends, lovers, I waited until the last chance to see her. Now what? We don't know. But if I have learned anything from the past, if the movie reminded me of anything, that is I don't have to put up with people who don't give me what I want. Even if what I want is childish, ridiculous, unrealistic, in the end, it's better to live with my own unrealized desires than to live in the shadow of someone else's rules and desires.

I found out that the guy she'd dating is going to Berlin in September, same month she said she'd be there. It was a stab in the heart, and I didn't know why it was a stab in the heart. But the fact that it was means I really need to get away from all this nonsense. They are moving on with their lives, while I am still living in that same empty hope that got me to wait "just a little longer."

Life is like this movie: hope doesn't translate into reality, there are no happy endings if all you're looking at is a very narrow segment of your life. The true happy ending is learning something from an experience and moving on with a smile. She won't come back, not likely. But the only happy ending with her coming back is if she truly gives me what I want. And if I wait for that ending, my life has already ended, at least come to a pause.