During my insomnia tonight I re-watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for the first time in a few years. Most of my memories of this movie had devolved into bra-less Kirsten Dunst in a tank top jumping on a bed. Good times.

I’d forgotten how beautifully shot this movie is. I’d also forgotten that, like I’m sure many a nerd out there does, I self identify with this movie somewhat.

I’m haunted by memories. While I’m often, even usually, content with my life, and down-right happy a good bit of the time, there’s always the memory of the fact that I’ve felt more. Like Joel and Clementine on the frozen lake in the movie, I’ve had those moments of pure bliss where nothing else in the world matters. Everything else is gone, and you’re just…there. Your life is filled.

I have a card to remember one by, and a photo to remember another. But mostly I remember that both are gone. This is what ruins me emotionally. I know my life is awesome. Most of the time these thoughts are the farthest things from my head. But at night, when the mind is supposedly at rest, they creep forth from the shadows of the room.

Or maybe I’ll catch a memory in the way someone touches someone else while I’m out.

I take to emotions, and how to handle them, very naturally. I’m unflappable but not to the point of being a cold automata. I’m not the best shoulder to cry on but I’m empathic enough to understand, if not console.

But when it comes to chasing those moments, all of that checks out, and I’m a fish out of water. That blissful is like the ocean to me. I know it’s there, somewhere, and every part of me cries out for it to live. Even knowing something will end badly, knowing something can never work in the long term, in this one part of my life I’ll throw it all away just to feel like I can breathe that little while. And when it ends, I’ll have another memory, another souvenir, to keep me awake at night, wondering where, when, or even if I’ll ever find it again.