Like Crazy

I've often said that without this movie, I wouldn't be me, and I still think that. But I've always worn it as sort of badge of individualized pride, like I can trace my tendencies and major life players all back to this, and isn't that cute. But now I don't really think it's a good thing. This movie has been harmful to me for almost a full decade now. I broke up with my first girlfriend because of this movie. I attempted to have 2 simultaneous long distance relationships with terrible girls in High School because of this movie. I ended up in California because of this movie. I've projected romantic fatalism on countless people because of this movie, because this movie believes that the more dramatic and painful love is, the better it is. That conflict enhances and inevitably poisons. Which, while childish, is neither new or incorrect. I guarantee you there were kids walking around in the 1600's, smitten with the Romeo and Juliet idea that the most enchanting love stories are the most tragic ones. That's still the case in media today and probably always will be. The problem is that none of it is real. That you're meant to outgrow that belief once you actually start to interact with people and slowly learn that nobody is going to fully be what you want them to be and no one is hardly ever going to feel about you the way you want them to (unless you're spectacularly lucky), and that even if they do, it doesn't last. That's what life's taught me, anyway. So I saw this at 15 and hung on to it: that this was the only thing worth wanting, that it would be significant, that there would be obstacles, but all worth it because the crisis only enriches the love. That's what this movie believes. Not fate or soulmates per se, but that this is the most important thing and it's gonna come in an angelic face and a British accent that reads you original poetry and if you ever get it, you can't ever let it go, regardless of the real world consequences, because your youth is constantly slipping away from you and this is the best and only way to preserve it. Everything else is secondary. That's what this movie taught me at 15 and that's what I've been carrying around ever since, compounded and reinforced by Stars and Lana Del Rey and the dreaminess of the Santa Monica Pier. I chose a long time ago to feel all of it as much as possible and now, even when I know that's a bad idea, I can't talk myself out of it because it's too deeply ingrained. I think this happens to a lot of people, they're just better at handling it than I am. Kids that I once knew. All dead hearts to you. Sorry for psychoanalyzing myself in public but this is a diary after all and I have to keep coming up with new things to say about this movie, so sue me.