There's a perfect moment where Clementine receives the tape from the session when she has her memory of Joel erased. They hear her saying the most acerbic things about him, about how he's boring, how he's changed her and all the tiny minute things he does that piss her off. The typical petty things that emerge when you've been in a relationship with someone. And then of course, she goes to his flat, and he has a tape, in which he talks openly about her - the things she does. And she listens to it. They verbally destroy each other. Hearing the worst about yourself from the person you love is always terrible. But it happens - it will happen. It has happened for me.
And then this happens:
How perfect. After all, you can't know how much you will love someone until the next person comes along. And you will either love them more or less, which will create a fork in the hypothetical road that you walk down. You will stay, or go. You will stay and try because whatever it is that you have means enough that you don't want to let go.
I suppose the real question is - deciding what to keep and what to discard.
If you knew that all you'd have left would be tears and heartbreak, would you keep that, rather than have nothing at all?
I'm reminded of this quote, which explains what I'm trying to say much more elegantly than I ever could:
''There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) know these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. ''
Michael Cunningham, The Hours
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