"I just need to know you're not going to wake up in the morning and feel differently."

Love and [in]security.

500 Days of Summer is one of my all-time favorite movies. I have seen it at least 30 times and every time I watch it I notice and learn something new. You know a movie is incredible and your own when you are able to revisit it at different times in your life and it speaks to you in ways that it had not the previous time you watched it. Movies can do this for us, books can do this for us, people, conversations, music...anything and everything that has soul.

The title of this post is a quote from 500 Days of Summer...Tom says this to Summer when she comes back and knocks on his door late at night after they had a fight. As I sat in my psychological anthropology class today and participated and listened to our discussion and my professor's talk about American folk models about love and relationships, this quote suddenly sprung into my mind and something just clicked for me. I realized that Tom's quote and mindset in saying this was exactly what contributed to his exact fear.
What do I mean by this? Did that even make sense? Okay, let me unpack it for you.

Tom is insecure. He is scared- as anyone else might be when they are opening up to possibly love another person. He asks of Summer something that no one can provide which is guaranteed and unbounded security. Tom's need for security is resting on his idea that love and a person can be controlled and guaranteed and ultimately stems, again, from Tom's fears and insecurities. However, through Tom's illusion that people and feelings can be controlled, he closes himself off to not only himself but also to Summer. He closes himself off through this needed illusion/ sense of control and through his rooted expectations. He then, as a result, is not fully present with and for Summer and instead, does not love her for her true self but rather he seems to love her as an idea and a particularly image that he maintains throughout the entire movie. This is another way of attempting to create a sense of "safety" and "security" in a situation where such notions need to be abandoned in order for them to be genuinely and truly felt. To be truly present and to truly love someone, you must be able to be vulnerable and open with them.

One of my favorite books, "Tuesdays with Morrie" has taught me so much about life and love but one quote that seems to connect really well with Tom's quote is this:

“If you hold back on the emotions--if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them--you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely.”

― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays With Morrie

So there it is. The one thing you crave, deserve, and need is the one thing that is wholeheartedly terrifying, scary, and not guaranteed. To open up and love someone is a risk- it makes you vulnerable and tender and it is scary- but it is the only way to receive love.
I'll leave you with this:

“It is a risk to love.

What if it doesn't work out?

Ah, but what if it does.”

― Peter McWilliams