Like the sunshine :: my favorite movies

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) 

“Joely?” ~ Clementine

“Yeah, Tangerine?” ~ Joel

“Am I ugly?” ~ Clementine

“Uh-uh.” ~ Joel

“When I was a kid, I thought I was. I can’t believe I’m crying already. Sometimes I think people don’t understand how lonely it is to be a kid, like you don’t matter. So, I’m eight, and I have these toys, these dolls. My favorite is this ugly girl doll who I call Clementine, and I keep yelling at her, ‘You can’t be ugly! Be pretty!” It’s weird, like if I can transform her, I would magically change, too.” ~ Clementine

[kisses Clementine] “You’re pretty.” ~ Joel

“Joely, don’t ever leave me.” ~ Clementine

“You’re pretty…you’re pretty…pretty…” ~ Joel

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind trailer

Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime :: Beck

There are a million reasons why I relate to this movie so much, and why Clementine resonates with me so deeply. This scene, and the conversation they have, is one of the biggest ones. There is this near constant undercurrent of insecurity that plagues me incessantly. Most of the times I can manage to ignore it, or if it isn’t disregard, it is that I’m so used it being part of my make-up that I just plod along with it in tow. It does not seem to affect my daily life much, and I’ve learned to push through its naggings, especially in the realm of work and parenthood, and just tell myself that I’m good at what I do. I’m a good employee, and I’m a good mother, these things hardly come into question for me.

But, that internal beast of insecurity is impossible to shut up when I let myself care about someone. I have typically such a thick wall around me when it comes to relationships, and love, that the insecurity tends to sleep, or turn off, when I deal with things like dating, or talking with someone who I deep down know there is no potential with. But, the few times I’ve let the walls down, and let my heart get into the picture, and fall for someone – well that insecurity is shaken violently awake and all the years of hurt, pain and rejections – those ever-echoing feelings of never being enough, or being too much, come front and center, poking at me, making it impossible to ignore.

That’s when the over-thinking starts, and the doubts, and the questioning everything I do. I feel like I start to ready myself for failure, feeling as if I screw up anything that really matters to me, and that I am just going to mess it all up again. It is so defeating, so painful, so heartbreaking to feel this way and I truly hate it, but I don’t know how to stop it. I try to breathe through it, but my breath gets caught in my throat, choking me. I find myself (even more) sleepless. I start to feel needy, and irrationally sad. And then I start deciding that things are falling apart, even when they are not at all. Around this time I shut down, go quiet, sink lower than anyone ever seems to really notice.

The only buoy in the water of all this self-doubt is the need to be reaffirmed. I’m an honest person, and I try to be open, so I will usually try to reach out – try, not always succeeding. And it is then, in those moments that I am at my most fragile. It is then when I truly need to be held and told that I’m alright just as myself. But that – that part – feels so impossible to ask for.

It really hurts, some days, to be this way.

[last lines]

“I can’t see anything that I don’t like about you.” ~ Joel

“Okay.” ~ Joel

[pauses] “Okay.” ~ Clementine

Last scene