The best way to get over a (wo)man is to turn her(him) into literature. – Henry Miller

First of all, this is not something I would dare call literature. This is not even a movie review. Let’s just say that this is an attempt to make sense of things. Things that the author thought she killed already and buried on a very lonely field somewhere in New Zealand.

But as we all know, some things just never go away. Optimism compels us to believe that feelings, experiences and memories can be transformed into something that will drive us to be better and stronger. But this metamorphosis of the bad takes time and if we are on the verge of collapse, we then fool ourselves that we can set these things aside. And so we move on. But with moving on, I mean that we go through the prerequisites of life and accomplish it. We wake up, go to school or work, grab a beer before going home and we go to bed. But as we lie down, we stare at the ceiling and realize, “Really, who the fuck am I kidding here?” Yeah, we manage to complete a day and if we look at it from afar, it seems that everything is okay but when we look at it with macro-eyes, the smallest things that make us remember a moment (how the significant other wore a shirt just because you told him/her or how sad you were on the bus ride home because you didn’t get to see him/her the entire day but suddenly the bus stops, someone gets on and it’s him/her), are all gone. Everything’s dull and gray and the sky has worn this look of impending rain everyday. And as the gloom piles up day after day, you reach the point where you wake up to the harsh morning light and get assaulted by the question “What for?” That is the saddest part because we know that there is no more answer.

Somewhere along the line, we start to salvage our wits and whatever is left of our heart by trying to be over that someone. I’ve read somewhere that we never get over it but we get to the point where it doesn’t bother us so much. No, we don’t go numb. We still feel. And these feelings always have ways of betraying us. It is this gun inside us, waiting to be pulled at the trigger: a friend who asked you about him/her, a message on your phone you thought you already erased, a shirt he/she left and a song. God, it’s always the songs that hit the hardest. I even think sometimes that maybe the universe plays this cosmic joke on everyone by letting us hear the perfect saddest song during the perfect saddest moment.

That is what this movie did to me. 500 Days of Summer was the song the universe played on full volume for me to hear clearly and remember each line perfectly. Dear Universe, it was not funny. To be clear, whatever feelings it is that I may have at the moment is not something I was trying to get over it. I am not a strong believer of such concept. I was just learning how to deal with it and I honestly think that I was getting better at it. But then this song (movie) played and the entirety of it seemed all too familiar. But I guess that this joke is really more of a reminder. It strikes us at the most unexpected of times so we can stop and think really hard and see how far we’ve come and how close we are to the finish line. Me? I am not running my way to the end. I am taking my time and at my own pace. I see the crowd cheering for me at the horizon because feelings, like this movie, also reach its end.