Seeing The Big Picture
by MEREDITH HIGHT
I missed the soft red flare in his cheeks when it got cold, the faded brown of his Converse sneakers, the delicate fan of lines around his gold green eyes. I missed the long talks about the latest New Yorker, the introduction to the latest and the best indie music, the references to David Foster Wallace and Chuck Klosterman and Jhumpa Lahiri. I missed his piano player hands, his muted glances, his soft gravelly voice.
All I had ever wanted was to be with him, to be able to have all of him all of the time. It wasn't about me. It was about him, because I didn't know enough to make it about me.
I dressed differently then, because everything was different then. I was someone else, I was someone who was in graduate school, I was someone who wore Uggs, and not for the beach, but because of the snow. I was doing my best to be the best, and I didn't know yet that it was more important to be myself than to be the best at anything. I was lost and confused and lonely and sad but mostly, I was just someone who didn't know.
In short, I was Tom from 500 Days of Summer. Not a love story, but a story about love. Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. An indie romantic comedy. Yes! I had been watching the trailers for this movie with gleeful anticipation in recent months. I downloaded songs from the soundtrack and carefully marked on my calendar the release date. July 17.
We went to a midnight screening and I knew as soon as I saw him falling for her just how painful this would be to watch. On the inside, I was screaming. Don't do it! Can't you see? She is just not that into you. It is outrageously obvious. What you will endure will be tragic. Oh no. She just kissed you. Uh oh. Now you've slept with her. Oh, Tom.
The trick of it is, of course she kisses him first. This is how it happens, this is how you become a part of something you will not necessarily pursue on your own. Because you know trouble when you see it in his/her eyes, but you want to get into it anyway.
They both feel the spark; she pushes him, wants to know if he likes her. He declines to give an answer, so she kisses him in the copy room at work. She does other things, other things that make Tom think she likes him, no, really. That she really likes him. They have such a good time together, watching old movies, listening to the Smiths, talking about Magritte.
This is another trick of the almost maybe I don't know. If you are over 25, you have nearly certainly been in a relationship like this. You are so in, and you are so in because you just well, you just really connect with this someone in a way you never have before. Ever. Before, you didn't even know you were alone, and now you cannot imagine an alone. There is no alone, because you are now bound by a shared sensibility, a shared reading of this vast and mixed up world that no one else could replicate.
But this someone, they are so — well, they are not quite out, but they are not quite in. What does this mean? You know you have something special, something somewhat mutual. But you don't know where you stand.
I will tell you exactly what this means. This means that sometimes you feel like shit, and sometimes you feel like you want to stay with them forever.
It was just too agonizing to watch, Tom falling for Summer while Summer stands on her own solid ground. The clever flipping back and forth in time of their relationship, the temper traps, the beautifully shot downtown los angeles, the ingenious and innovative references (for a romantic comedy) to Seventh Seal, to the French New Wave, none of it could register.
I was still screaming on the inside at Tom.
Summer is what is commonly known (among women and therapists anyways) as "emotionally unavailable" (at least to Tom) and guilty of sending "mixed signals" and being a "commitment phobe." Part of what makes 500 Days of Summer original is that these stereotypically male characteristics are applied to our sweet, charming, indie girl with a bow in her hair Summer. As portrayed by the charming Zooey Deschanel.
And the stereotypically female characteristics: sweet, loyal, sensitive, attentive are applied to our hopelessly romantic hero, Tom.
Had these roles been reversed, we would have merely had on our hands a story as old as time. Most recently depicted in He's Just Not That Into You starring Ginnifer Goodwin and Justin Long, Jennifer Aniston and Ben Affleck and assorted others.
Though I was angry with Tom, for not seeing what was inevitable, for not seeing through her, for not valuing himself enough to deflect her, to most of the audience he is an utterly relatable figure who represents their agony at the hands of another. Many, many, many of us have been in such a lopsided relationship.
As I was. Several years have lapsed since this - there is no other word for it but traumatizing, quasi relationship that led to numerous nights of crying on my bathroom floor and eating cheese puffs. The details of what happened aren’t that important, but you should know I was in love, I was heartbroken and I was left in of all places, Syracuse New York.
Did you know that in Syracuse there is more snow than in Moscow and more grey sky days than in Seattle?
Due to the circumstances of his life (again, not mine) all communication ceased to an abrupt halt, though some things were left undetermined. Such were his final words to me, in which he suggested he finally knew what he felt for me and would be trying to feel for his girlfriend how he once did.
Despite varying attempts at googling over the ensuing years, a facebook friend request (which apparently went ignored), and loose ties through mutual friends and acquaintances, I never did know what became of him. Or those efforts with his girlfriend.
Until Friday, July 17, almost four years to the day since I last saw my Summer. Through friends, I heard he was working in Africa. I googled a goldmine. A Twitter, a blog, Flickr. Picture after picture after picture. Of him and his girlfriend, on various vacations around the world. They were like an REI catalogue, on permahoneymoon.
This was not painful; it was enlightening. Similar to Tom's little sister, who urged Tom to look back at the relationship with Summer, because he may see something different than he thought, the Internet was providing me with a fresh lens.
Perception gave way to reality. The near mythic space he had occupied in my mind as quite possibly the love of my life, the one who should have been the one, gave way to the realization that I am not a person who would live in a third world country, doing do gooder work. I admire it, but it is not my choice nor is it my calling. My life could not be in greater opposition: I live in Los Angeles and work in the entertainment industry. I write about dating and go to the beach a lot.
But I am happy, and I know that I have arrived here, on my own and for myself.
With him, I would have never have become the person I needed to be. With him, I would have always felt secondary. Without him, I found myself.
The problem with identifying too much with Tom is seeing him as a victim. Tom is not a victim of Summer's charm. No no, Tom is not smart enough to pick himself over her. Even in the closing scene, he is the one telling her "I really hope you're happy" not too long after she tells him "I woke up one day and I knew. I knew what I was always uncertain of with you." Guess what, Tom? She's in love. She has a ring on her finger. I'm thinking she is happy. And I'm thinking your concern should be your own happiness. Not hers. Architecture was a good step.
In the end, I found myself feeling about 500 Days of Summer much the same way Tom felt about Summer. I loved it. I hated it. I hated that I loved it. But I had to admit in the end that it made me feel something, and like any relationship, that is worth something.
There is one part of Tom’s story that doesn’t dovetail with my own. He meets someone else, and they share an immediate and instantaneous connection. His faith in love soulmates and fate is at least momentarily restored.
Yes I have met people and we haveconnected. But in each case, I have noted very early ona perceptible imbalance in my feelings and interest and theirs. And thanks to my summer/Summer, I know better than to stick around. In fact, I run as far away as I can, and as fast as possible. These days, I would no more get involved with someone who does not feel for me what I feel for them than I would lie down in front of a moving tank.
Now that I know myself - and that what I want is about more than the soft flare of a red cheek or the ability to deconstruct the latest Malcolm Gladwell piece in The New Yorker together - that what I want is someone who is available and able to commit to me, someone who quite simply, wants to be with me as much as I want to be with them:
I really do hope that what is in the end true for Tom, can be true for me.
Meredith Hight is the senior contributor to This Recording. She tumbls here.
"You Kill" — Bad Veins (mp3)
"Falling Tide" — Bad Veins (mp3)
"Gold and Warm" — Bad Veins (mp3)
"The Lie" — Bad Veins (mp3)
