22 Reasons Why I Love Will Grayson, Will Grayson

When I started this (secondary) blog, I told myself I would post only the ones that look least like random rants about how everything sucks in the world. Because that’s what the other blog is for—me being more free and less sensible and altogether snarky and dark and pessimistic. I figured, if I was going to complain about the shittiness of everything around me, or bask in the glorious glow of love and happiness, I should at least write it down properly. Otherwise, I’m wasting my time and energy.

But for tonight I want to break that rule. I’ve just finished reading Will Grayson, Will Grayson and I was surprised that I’ve highlighted 22 different quotes from the book. Believe me, that’s a lot. Tonight I will not ramble on about how much I love the book, which I do, by the way. I will just straight out list the quotes I’ve highlighted and hope that they be enough reasons why everyone should read the book.

1. “If you can’t trust your gut, then what can you trust?” And I say, “You can trust that caring, as a rule, ends poorly,” which is true. Caring doesn’t sometimes lead to misery. It always does.
2. “I feel like my life is so scattered right now. Like it’s all these small pieces of paper and someone’s turned on the fan. But talking to you makes me feel like the fan’s been turned off for a little bit. Like things could actually make sense. You completely unscatter me, and I appreciate that so much.”
3. “As lives go, I’ll take the quietly desperate over the radically bipolar.”
4. “Some people have life; some people have music.”
5. “Why would you like someone who can’t like you back? The question is rhetorical, but if I wasn’t trying to shut up, I’d answer it: You like someone who can’t like you back because unrequited love can be survived in a way that once-requited love cannot.”
6. “…how I would feel with him here. That peace. It would be so happy, and it makes me sad because it only exists in words.”
7. “He is both the source of my happiness and the one I want to share it with. I have to believe that’s a sign.”
8. “How is it even possible to be both attracted and not attracted to someone at the very same moment, and whether maybe I am a robot incapable of real feelings, and do you think that actually, like trying to follow the rules about shutting up and not caring has made me into some kind of hideous monster whom no one will every love or marry.”
9. “It’s hard to believe in coincidence, but it’s even harder to believe in anything else.”
10. “The things you hope for the most are the things that destroy you in the end.”
11. “Anything that happens all at once is just as likely to unhappen all at once, you know?”
12. “’Random questions’ are the least random of all questions.”
13. “Maybe I don’t like you the way someone should like you. I don’t like you in the call-you-and-read-you-a-poem-every-night-before-you-go-to-bed way. I’m crazy, okay?”
14. “There are people in the world with real problems, you know? You gotta keep it in perspective.”
15. “When things break, it’s not the actual breaking that prevents them from getting back together again. It’s because a little piece gets lost—the two remaining ends couldn’t fit together even if they wanted to. The whole shape has changed.”
16. “I think how much depends upon a best friend. When you wake up in the morning, you swing your legs out of bed and you put your feet on the ground and you stand up. You don’t scoot to the edge of the bed and look down to make sure the floor is there. The floor is always there. Until it’s not.”
17. “I don’t know what freaks me out more—that I matter to him, or that he matters to me.”
18. “Need is never a good basis for any relationship. It has to be much more than that.”
19. “…in my recent experience, I’d say hurt tends to drown out sorry.”
20. “This is why we call people exes, I guess—because the paths that cross in the middle end up separating at the end.”
21. “Love is the most common miracle.”
22. “Weltschmerz. It’s the depression you feel when the world as it is does not line up with the world as you think it should be. I live in a big goddamed weltzschermz ocean, you know? And so do you. And so does everyone. Because everyone thinks it should be possible just to keep falling and falling over, to feel the rush of the air on your face as you fall, that air is pulling your face into a brilliant goddamed smile. And that should be possible. You should be able to fall forever.”

Understanding Ruby Sparks

Expectations.

We all have them. From work, from friends, from potential lovers, from baristas in the coffee shop we frequent, from cab drivers, from our mothers and fathers, even from strangers.

One way to kill your expectations is to watch a movie you have absolutely no idea about save from the movie poster and the title, which incidentally is also the name of one of the main characters. So, you only have a vague poster and a name, then you sit for two hours to watch it, and you have no idea how it will go or how it could affect you.

That’s how it went for me last night when I watched Ruby Sparks. Even the name sounded silly.

Sparks.

Ruby.

Ruby Sparks.

The past few weeks have been like a long chapter in a story that revolves about relationships and expectations. It seems like everyone I talk to have something to contribute to this, whether they are unaware or not. I don’t necessarily think that it’s bad to want specific things from a relationship—assurance, security, consistency, etc. But Ruby Sparks made me realize how dangerous it could be if you let yourself be driven by your expectations that they blind you of what you already have.

The movie really hit home, especially because Calvin is a writer. While I’m not a novelist, I understand where his ideals are coming from, and why he wrote Ruby Sparks the way she is. I understand him. I recognize his need to keep up to his ideals (sometimes) more than to the real people around him.

See, when you feel that everything around and inside you are falling apart, creating a character is an escape. It’s an oasis in the midst of a fucking desert. And when you’re a writer, establishing a character is no different from meeting a new friend and getting to know that friend.

There was a pivotal scene in the movie that I don’t think I will ever forget. It’s when Calvin told Ruby that he, in fact, wrote her (not wrote about her), and that he could make her do anything he wanted. And he provided a demonstration.

And it blew my mind. It was heartbreaking and enlightening at the same time. I felt Ruby’s longing to be free and I felt Calvin’s struggle to make her see. And for a moment I didn’t know if I wanted Ruby to stop spinning or Calvin to stop writing. (I know this may not make sense to someone who hasn’t seen the movie).

The point is, we can’t hold on to our expectations of other people. They will always be themselves, and we will always be us. They can’t always be who we want them to be in the same way that we can’t always live up to how they want us to be. The best we could do is live with one another’s unconnected-ness and be okay with it.