Have you ever had your heart broken? Have you ever broken someone else’s heart? Do you want to talk about it?

On a balmy early autumn evening I went to see (500) Days of Summer with my friend Andrew as kind of a lark. We ate burgers at a kitschy diner near Union Square and then, during the film, he squeezed my hand several times for solidarity.

1. I was seventeen. No other boy had ever seen me naked. How could I possibly know how much it would hurt when you told me, over coffee in Harvard Square, that you were sleeping with someone else? I couldn’t. I went home and watched Harold and Maude. For the first time, I wasn’t disgusted by the eighty year-old flesh. I got it now. I was free! There’s a million things to be, you know that there are…

As I left the theater and walked towards the L train in the misty rain, I texted Kate Axelrod (who had given me a mixed review of the film): “Just finished movie. So twee. I liked it. Unsurprise of the century.” I’m kind of unabashedly into preciousness.

2. When Amélie was over at the small repertory cinema in Hamilton, Ontario, it was after midnight and the parking lot was empty. It was a forty-minute walk home but the night was too magical to take a cab so we walked over the overpass and past the half-finished neo-Gothic cathedral without seeing another soul, the wet pavement twinkling under our sandaled toes. You took my hand and said, “You look just like Amélie.” In that moment, I was in love and I believed in magic and fairytales.

One of the reasons I liked the film is that despite (or perhaps because of) her indie preciousness I have a huge girl crush on Zooey Deschanel. I don’t believe little girls learn to envy beauty itself. I think we grow to covet a certain, specific kind of beauty. For example, I have never had much interest in the Marilyn Monroes of the world. I always wanted to be an Audrey Hepburn—pale, brunette, delicate almost to the point of fragile, a bit sad-looking but in a playful, girlish way. Oh, and impeccably stylish. Maybe not quite as skinny, though. Hence Zooey Deschanel; if I had a type, I guess she’d be it.

3. We decided to go see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind because it was either that or break up. We had been fighting for days. After the film was over, we stopped in a playground off of St. Laurent Street in Montreal and slid down the child-sized slides. Your gangly, slender limbs spilled everywhere. Giggling, we decided that there really was no point in breaking up. We’d probably just end up getting back together anyway.

I have plenty of criticisms of the (500) Days of Summer. For example, why does the mysterious Summer seem to have no professional goals of her own? Tom, the main character, spends all of his time obsessing over his lapsed career as an architect and drawing city skylines on Summer’s alabaster forearm while she flounces about in 1960s-inspired dresses and seems only to find purpose in a diamond ring (can you back me up on this one, Anna?). And what’s with the cartoon bluebird?

4. I started to feel the stomach flu coming on about forty-five minutes into Man on Wire at Sunshine Cinema. I managed to make it through the entire film, all the way back to Williamsburg on the JMZ, and halfway down Bedford Avenue before I threw up in the middle of the street. And I literally mean the middle of the intersection. I’m not a pro at puking; I never do it, so I managed to barf all over my hands and shoes, right in front of the Bedford Cheese Shop. It was only our second or third date and you went to a Mexican restaurant to get me napkins as I dry-heaved behind a garbage can. You laughed and told me stories as you walked me home, and I kept lamenting how revolting I was. Then you biked to a store to buy me ginger-ale. I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep the ginger-ale down, but in that moment, I knew I liked you.

Criticisms aside, though, there’s some truth to (500) Days of Summer. Those of us who have spent enough years in the so-called dating game have all been Tom. We’ve all pined for someone who would never return our feelings, imagined perfection in their mannerisms. But we’ve also all been Summer. We’ve all been poetic in our utter unattainability. Every word whispered to a would-be lover sinks like a weighted hook. It is an eternal dance and there’s no karma in it. You have a choice. You can focus on the reality of the situation – the back and forth, the one and sameness of all of our romantic experiences. Or, you can make (or at least imagine) a movie out of it: invent characters who talk to each other about Smiths songs in the elevator; imagine Carla Bruni crooning as you walk home along Driggs Avenue at ten thirty pm, your heels clicking rhythmically on the pavement; believe in magic and fairytales.