The Eternal Sunshine of a Spotty Mind

Pt. II on remembering *for the girls*

I recently wrote a piece on the difficulties I encounter when dealing with memories. In it I explore the friction between remembering and letting go, how remembering is both a curse and a joy, and some ways, through literature and art, we might better approach the task of remembering.

There's a big portion of the memories I struggle with that are a bit too personal to share in a public format, but which inform my thoughts on this topic: memories of past romantic relationships.

I have many gripes with dating, which having now done for the better part of a decade, I feel I can at least posit with some degree of experience. Of all necessary evils, this may be the worst.

I don't know where to start, perhaps with the fact that I don't know what it means to be "over" somebody. I carry with me a hundred memories of the boys I've loved, the songs they've sent me, the ways they've touched me, the places we lay in the grass as the sky grows dark, the words they've said and promises they've made that have now come untrue. I spent so long, so many months, years, phone calls, letters, meals, glasses of wine trying to get to know a person, and now I must spend the rest of my life trying to forget.

Even now, as I look down from my desk at my tangled headphones, I remember you patiently untangling them, taking great care as you wrapped them in a neat little circle, wiping them with a washcloth… who cleans headphones?! I remember being giddy, that first kiss when you pulled me up from the picnic in Hampstead Heath, walking me back to the Tube from your apartment at night, filling up my thermos for the ride back, turning around to watch you there on the station with your hands in your pockets.

Me + You, Tube, 2021

There's so much to remember.

Walking through Eastern Market and buying brioche and peaches and eating them from the bag before we even got home. Your shoulder touching mine as we knelt for confession. That night you drove me home and the car was so full of everything that needed to be said but neither of us could say that I had to roll down the window as we crossed the Potomac… the beginning of the end.

Or what about in college? The blissful idealism and extremism of young love where everything was simultaneously the best thing in the world or the worst. I cringe at the pages in my college journals where I agonizingly recount the rejection of you not inviting me to the basketball game but then forget it all the next day when you said hi to me across the quad.

I've probably saved too much. Emails, notes app full of details of dates, text messages, letters, gifts, books with inscriptions I now can't read. I guess I keep them because while I was falling in love with you, I was becoming me.

But at the same time I long to remember, I long to forget.

In the Kate Winslet and Jim Carey hit, Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, this scenario plays out. After a painful breakup, both opt to undergo a procedure to erase the memories of each other from their minds.

"One of the reasons why Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, now 20 years old, ranks among the best love stories of the twenty-first century is that it makes the unique argument that failure is an essential, precious part of romantic experience."¹

As Jim Carey finds out, erasing the pain means erasing the joy.

In one of my favorite parts of the film, the main characters are stuck in their first memory together, the last memory that is being erased. As they sit in front of the ocean, she looks at him and says, “This is it Joel, it’s gonna be gone soon.” A sad smile eclipses his face, “I know.” “What do we do?” she asks. To which he responds, “Enjoy it.” He gives up fighting instantly and decides to enjoy the little time they have left together. It’s a heartbreaking scene that resonates with my struggle. Sometimes I think I try so hard to remember and eternalize memories that I end up sacrificing those that are being created right in front of me.

As a Christian, I can rest in the fact that the painful memories of broken relationships can be redeemed. Something that, in the moment, feels like a betrayal, a broken promise, the end of the road, I can look back and see God guiding me in a deliberate path I could never have foreseen.

Isn't this the whole story of the gospel? What man intended for evil, God intended for good? (Genesis 50:20) Esther, Abraham, Jacob, Ruth, Joseph and Mary… and of course, Jesus! We would never, never want to erase the pain of Good Friday, because for all its thorns and blood, weeping and betrayal, nails and death, there is a resurrection on the other side that changed everything.

So yes, my mind is abnormally spotty, but I would like to keep it that way for now, thank you.

1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind at 20: a love story that’s impossible to forget | Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind | The Guardian