I’m a sucker for a romance movie or book and it’s mainly because I’m a hopeless romantic. I’m one of those people that replays a love song on a sunny day with a slight breeze romanticizing my life and what it could be. I remember the very first time I watched the Notebook. It was a sunny day after work and I came home early, wanting to enjoy my free time. I looked up romantic movies to watch because there’s something about cheesy, White couples, falling in love that gets me. I’m usually someone who enjoys more queer movies but clearly we don’t have enough good ones that don’t just fall into a societal stereotype so I settle.

The Notebook is about two people who meet at a carnival. The guy approaches the girl and the girl clearly does not want to be with him. Same old same old. Eventually, this story doesn’t seem like the rest because its a lot of foreshadowing. Kind of like in the Titanic where the older lady starts off the movie. It’s one of my favorite storylines, although it follows a predictable structure it’s just classic. It represents love in every way possible. The immediate crush you can have after seeing someone, or yearning for someone’s love, a summer LOVE, non-accepting parents, letting go, your first time, and the list goes on.

Love is shown in so many ways in this movie; friendship, family, romantic relationships. Which all have one common, that love is easy. Life isn’t but loving someone is so easy in this story. The boy writes 365 letters to the girl after she moved away but her mother would throw them out because he was not a wealthy man. She believed that he wouldn’t give her daughter the lifestyle she truly needed and deserve.. maybe affording that lifestyle in general. But, after the boy became a man, after serving in the military, watching his best friend die, he became something more. He loved life a little more. It sucked and he was hurt, but he still smiled. He came back home to his father and lost him too… But he still lived! He built the house for the woman that he loved because he said he would, so he did.

Allie.. She met a man that was young, fine, and wealthy. She was engaged and wedding shopping when she saw a picture of her first love and the home she described to him to build for her.

This is more than a love story. It’s commitment. Trying again and again until you both. get it right. Not being afraid to fail each other. And remembering all the time you spent with your partner on this Earth.

They died in each other’s arms at the end. Cheesy but so good.