Tonight I watched a movie I haven't seen in a couple years:  50 First Dates.  I'm not much of an Adam Sandler fan, or a Drew Barrymore fan, either.  But every once in a while, each of them makes a decent movie.  And this one's among them.  To me, anyway.

However, at one point, I got to thinking along the lines that Hollywood sets for us... about idealistic love, idyllic love, where even the shittiest life can be tolerable because of the love you have for another.  My, how nice that must be, I thought to myself.

Of course... the movies Hollywood makes of such relationships are nearly always movies about the early stages of a relationship, when New Relationship Energy is at its peak, messing with our heads in extreme ways.  You'd be hard pressed to find someone 10 years into a relationship who feels the same way as when it was only 10 weeks into it.  And Hollywood knows that, so you don't see movies about it.

But the thing that got me, tonight, was that I've been there.  At one of the lowest points in my life, I had that kind of love.  And it made my crappy existence tolerable.  Of course, in retrospect I can see how messed up I was (from another relationship that had ended the previous year, and from my lifetime of "issues"), and how unready I really was for another relationship.  Likely as not, this is why that one ultimately failed.

But I still look back with great fondness on it.  Sorry that it ended, especially how it ended.  I dunno... maybe that breakup was inevitable.  I try not to think of the latter days of it; they're too painful.  Although, in its own way, thinking of the early days is even more painful.