An Ode to Having Loved and Lost

Why is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?

Joel and Clementine both explore this question in the 2004 film “The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” as they, following their painful breakup, undergo a procedure to have the relationship as well as any memory of the other person erased from their memories. The movie focuses on Joel as his memories are being erased and he, as he's losing her, realizes that he doesn't want to. Even if the memories bring pain, he doesn't want to lose them. He tries desperately to save the memories, to keep hold of Clementine, and eventually realizes that he doesn't care if he loses her all over again, he simply doesn't want to forget.

So the question. Why is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? Is it better? For those who haven't seen the movie, I'm going to spoil the ending. Joel wakes up the next morning after the procedure, not remembering Clementine at all. He skips work and meets her at the beach, which was the opening scene of the film. They, after having spent just a few days together, receive tapes in the mail telling them of the operation and of their past love life. The film ends as Clementine, confused and overwhelmed, walks away from Joel yet again. He chases after her, determined to do something different this time around, and when she says “I'll get bored with you and I'll feel trapped because that's what happens with me!”, Joel looks at her and says simply: “Okay.” He realized that, despite whatever pain may come in the end, to have loved is worth it. He may lose her, but he won't forget her this time. He doesn't want to lose something that means so much to him.

I have explored this question on my own recently as I too have loved and lost. My story is not a new one. It's nothing unique. I loved a girl, we were planning a future together, but in the end it just didn't work out like we were hoping. At times I wonder if it would be easier to go back and stop myself from ever asking her out in the first place. I've tried to trace back to the exact moment that things went wrong, and stop myself from going any further. So the question here is the same: was it better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all?

Yes.

Yes it was. Even though I've spent countless hours being angry, being sad, feeling lost, wishing I could move on but just trying to re-create what we had before, feeling completely frustrated and hurt and wanting to forget, I still am glad that, above all else, I know that I can love. I can be selfless. I can put someone else's happiness first. I can plan for the future and be confident in that. I got a glimpse of me being my best self for someone. Not the fake cover we put up so people like us, the real me trying my hardest to be great for someone else.

We didn't have too many, but we did have some sweet times. There are days that I wouldn't erase for anything, because they remind me that, however it ended, love is possible. I'll always remember dancing to a cover band play Neil Diamond. I'll never forget going for a walk in the park after a long week of being apart. Or the time I walked through all that snow just to give her a blessing when she was stressed out from all her school work. Or that one time that we sat at the MC and kept talking, neither of us wanting to leave because there was no one else we wanted to be with. Or, the one I hold closest, the time that we danced to Michael Buble's “Everything” and it was so, so great. I felt confident with my dancing for the first time ever. And at the end, when I dipped her, she leaned up and kissed me. I consider that the sweetest moment of our relationship. I wouldn't lose those memories for anything.

Those memories tell me that love is possible. They tell me that it was worth it. All I can do now of course is just hold on to those good times, forgive and let go of the hurt, and move forward with the assurance that love is possible again.

I've loved. I've lost. And I will love again.  

Life in Fast-Forward

I found myself not in a hurry for the first time in a long time, so I wanted to sit down and talk about what I've learned in the past year.

So, some brief back story before I jump into the lessons and whatnot. 

I began this year, 2014, as a young man recently returned from an LDS mission beginning his freshman year of college at an institution that is 90% LDS. Living the dream. Perfect situation, you'd say if you're LDS. Well, it was for me at first, but eventually the discontent settled in.

More on that later.

I began my semester in January looking for one thing: to move forward with my life the way I knew I was supposed to. "supposed to". And I was going to get going on that as soon as I could. I tried hard to fit right into my church congregation, to do good in my classes and figure out right away what I wanted to study in school. I was on track and I was kicking trash.

Then I met a girl.

It's always a girl.

Emily, her name was Emily.

One of my goals was also to get married, sooner rather than later. So you best believe I got right on it. I dated her hardcore, I was the best gentleman you could find, I said yes to all of her ideas, I brought her gifts and wrote her songs and woo'ed her to the best of my abilities. Within 2 months we were talking about marriage. Within 3 months we were engaged. I threw a lot of time, effort, and money into this relationship and into this girl, and I was certain I had her hook, line, and sinker. Still, I couldn't shake this uncertainty in my gut that maybe it wasn't going to pan out, maybe it all was a little too quick to be real. I didn't pay it any mind, though, because it fit so perfectly into my plans for my life. 

To be truthful, I do believe that I loved her. I did. She was beautiful. She taught me how to dance, she taught me that girls can have integrity and you don't have to worry about all of them (there's a back story about a girl I dated for 3 years in high school who, once I broke up with her, became someone else COMPLETELY and basically scarred me for a while). She taught me to put school work first and be disciplined too. She was a well rounded girl, talented, quiet, and cute as a kitten. 

Well, kittens grow up and semesters end, and we found ourselves going our separate ways for summer/fall break. I ended up in Arizona working at an Inn by the Grand Canyon, and she went home to California. I spent a week with her and her family at the beach before going to work, and it was there that I felt the biggest resistance. We both felt that it wasn't right, we just weren't meshing, but we were engaged and had committed to this, so you can't call that off, right? 

We stuck it out for a long time, but I'm sure you can tell by the tone of this blog that it didn't pan out. Eventually, about a month before the wedding, Emily called me up and basically said she couldn't do this anymore. She couldn't keep saying she had feelings she didn't. She couldn't keep fighting with me, couldn't keep pretending we were a great match when we weren't. It hurt like hell, but I had to grudgingly agree that she was right. So that was it. 

I haven't really heard from her since. Sure, we talked here and there to work out kinks in the cancelling of plans, flights, etc. Once that was all straight, though, I haven't heard a peep coming from her side of the world. I think if I dropped off the face of the earth, she probably wouldn't notice or care much. 

I don't say this to be bitter (though, admittedly, I was for a while). I just want to make one thing abundantly clear: we rushed this all way too much. We both knew that marriage was the next thing on our agendas, and we conveniently fit that requirement for each other. We had similar interests, we got along fine, and we rushed right into getting engaged before we even had stopped to examine our real feelings or whether or not we were even compatible. By the time we noticed problems, we had gotten too far into it to back out easily. We weren't even that great of friends, as evidenced by how easy it was to completely stop being a part of her life. Within a month she was, as far as I can tell, back to normal. I had made my mark, barely, and it was erased like so many second-guessed answers on a bubble sheet in the testing center.

My struggle was different. I rushed into this and put all my eggs in that one basket. I planned my life around that girl. Since then, I've been defining and re-defining and, frankly, guessing at who I think I am and what I think I want with my life. It's been a long and rough few months since all this went down, and I still don't have answers. But I'm managing to move on, one day and one step at a time. For real, each day I try to take a step away from the past and a step towards what I want to do with my life. 

So here's the lesson, the "tl;dr" for those who want it: please, please slow down with life. It's totally okay to not know where you're going, it's completely fine to not fit the image that your peers have set for you, it's completely normal to not know what you want out of life and to be looking. As long as you're moving and not sitting, that's what matters. 

Please, keep moving forward. 

Just don't catch yourself moving in fast-forward. 

Hopefully that was something that you needed to hear today. 

Cheers!

Cody