the first time i watched eternal sunshine, i was an angsty, impulsive 16-year-old experiencing her first break-up with someone who - naively, at the time - she thought she could spend the rest of her life with. i was overly emotional and excessively idealistic, but you’re supposed to be when you’re 16; ”reality” isn’t a rule that applies to you.

and yet, to fill the absence of that once all-consuming love, i had to replace it with an equally strong - yet entirely opposite - emotion: hate. i threw away his sweatshirts, cut up or burned our photos, and did everything else you would expect a 16-year-old going through their first break-up would do. and then, i watched eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.

i’d heard of the film before - i was already an addictive cinephile at this point in my life - but it was a classic that had thus far eluded me, even though i knew from the synopsis alone that this would be a story right up my alley. and at that very moment - a time in which i couldn’t think of anything better than erasing every last memory of my ex - i knew it was time to finally fix this blindspot.

to say i was left speechless by eternal sunshine of the spotless mind is an understatement. as soon as the credits started to roll, i felt like the entirety of my identity had been ripped apart and reassembled into a more complex - yet also more complete - final form. i went into the film expecting a story that would endorse my emotions and the enmity i felt for my ex. yet now, all i felt was forlorn melancholy.

i wouldn’t say my sadness subsided entirely, but that wasn’t what the film had set out to do either. instead, i was simply confused, and slightly angered at myself for how erratically i’d initially acted when my ex and i had split up. even though eternal sunshine made me relive all the hurt he had caused me, it reminded me of all the good at the same time. his perpetually messy hair; the dorky, toothy grin he always wore as soon as he saw me; our sloppy - yet sweet - first kiss; the summer nights in which we’d sneak out to do god knows what god knows where in our sleepy, small town; and so on and so forth.

and then, it made me cry. it made me cry maybe more than i’d ever cried in my life up until that point. and it wasn’t even just the film that made me cry this much - it was all the emotions it unearthed. all the emotions i was so eager to erase, just like joel’s memories of clementine. i may have burned my photographs with him, but the experiences i shared with my ex were forever etched in my brain, whether i liked it or not. and i’d have to learn to live with that.

it’d take months - and honestly, years - for me to finally be mature enough to properly process my emotions about him and reach a point where i could appreciate our time together without being angry with him that we couldn’t make it work or mournful of the life we might have lived (everything they say about “never forgetting your first love” is unfortunately terribly true), but eternal sunshine of the spotless mind was the movie that made me feel like it was possible - and gave me the tools to reach that realization myself.

it was also the first film that made me take screenwriting seriously - and made me realize it was a profession i truly wanted to pursue. i’d always known i wanted to be a storyteller of some sort and had been writing (and making silly little movies with my friends) my whole life, but eternal sunshine showed me that it shouldn’t simply be a “hobby” - it was all i ever wanted to do, and all i ever wanted to be. to make someone feel the way this film made me feel - to revitalize and reconfigure their entire identity in this same way - was all i could ever wish for. to turn a story of mine into a movie with universally affecting messages for all.

and i know I’m far from the only “film fan” to hold eternal sunshine of the spotless mind in high esteem or to look to it to provide comfort in that “post-breakup chaos,” but honestly? that just makes me love it so much more. i don’t need a film to be “mine and mine alone” - i love knowing that it’s a work that has endured for decades and cemented itself as a “classic” in film canon, as that only further inspires me to make something someday that matches its significance.

so, happy birthday to my forever favorite film, and thank you charlie kaufman for this maddeningly - yet masterfully - melancholic gift of a movie that will still continue to affect and inspire audiences for years to come. and as for #him? i hope he’s doing well too, and i hope he knows how much he still means to me, even after all these years.

and i wouldn’t want it any other way.