Black Moments

As writers, we all know what this means, what it entails, its signifigance to the story, the necessity for the character arch, the need to justifiy the Happily Ever After. That moment so dark, so helpless, there is no way the hero and heroine can possibly make it. It's over. It's done. And you wait with eager anticipation, flipping the pages, reading faster and faster, your heart in your throat hoping the two pull through, regardless of this huge, horrible BLACK MOMENT.

Possibly the most heartwrenching black moment I've watched/read was in the movie The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. If you haven't watched it, I highly recommended it.

Never have I felt what I experienced when watching that movie. Such despair. Such desperation. A love that ended in such pain, you choose to wipe it all away. Better to have loved and lost to have never loved at all? No thanks. The pain is too great. Erase it.

And you relive the moments as they're being erased, you remember the beginning, the pure fun and excitement, the exhiliaration of seeing each other, the skipping heartbeats at a single touch, the thrill that not only have you found someone you'd searched for - hoped for - but that unbelievable passion and breath-taking realization of that person loves you back. Those are there, and you see it all again, you RELIVE it, every smile, every word, every touch, forced to remember before the stresses of every day had hit, before the mundane drowned it out. But the memories, those moments, they fade during the removal along with the bad times you wanted taken away, and you scream, "No, not this one. LEAVE ME THIS ONE!" and then it's just... gone. The absolute panic, pure desperation to hang onto what once was. What you'd give, what you'd say, to not lose what was once there. When you finally see it really being gone FOREVER, you belatedly realize you not only desire it, crave it, you have to have it. You need it. Even through those bad times. Even through daily stresses. You look at the relationship from beginning to end in mere moments, months and months zeroed down into snapshots and you see how much the great times outweighed the bad times together. Then you blink, and the process is over, and all the moments, all the memories, are lost. Not even a shadow remains of what once was.

In this particular movie, with this huge black moment, I honestly didn't see a way to achieve the Happily Ever After. But the hero and heroine run into each other again, total strangers to each other now, but Fate brought them together again, this beating of hearts that matched so perfectly, looking into each other's eyes and seeing a reflection of something great, knowing in their soul that whatever "this" is, it's huge and needs to be explored.

And they started again. Fate was stronger than anything that could ever be erased, no matter how hard we tried to make that pain go away.

If it's meant to be, it just WILL be.

Better to have love and lost than to never love at all? I don't know. I really don't. But I do know we have to go on faith, even when that faith is shaky, because you never know what sneaky Fate has in store, and in the end, it may have been worth the pain just to experience the ride, to record in your heart and mind those amazing times over and over again, those little snapshots of love.