how "the social network" got me through my grief

“I need you.”

“I'm here for you.”

When I was thirteen, the summer before I started high school, one of my closest friends, Mollie, died. Before this, death was not something I knew. My great grandmother died when I was nine, but it did not effect me the way it did other members of my family. My great grandmother died but I did not grieve. Mollie died and grief consumed me. It was all I felt. I ate grief for breakfast, and when I went to sleep at night, it lied next to me like a lover I tried to reject. I rotted away in my bedroom, remembering all the things Mollie had ever said to me. I went back to school and all the friends I hadn’t seen in months after this change like a new person, like I was wearing new skin.

The year I turned thirteen was an important year of my life. I discovered Fight Club, movies, and David Fincher. I tried to write a novel (I failed, but still, I tried), and Mollie died. And in these discoveries, I found The Social Network on Netflix, and after my dad told me how good it was, I watched it. And then I watched it again. And again and again, I watched it. I didn’t feel as good as I did when I watched The Social Network. And I memorized the “my Prada’s at the cleaner’s” monologue, and I knew every line before they spoke it. And, for some reason, The Social Network became my everything.

I think, in everything with Mollie, I just needed comfort. I needed to know something, for something to become familiar to me. And this is where The Social Network fit in. The stakes were so low - I don’t give a fuck about Mark Zuckerberg - and I watched it without any anxiety. For the movie’s two hour runtime, I didn’t feel any worry at all. There was so much comfort in the evenness of Jesse Eisenberg’s voice, and in the Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross score. And suddenly, I knew it. I knew this movie like the back of my hand, or like a best friend since childhood. It was so familiar to me.

Film Comment Magazine Sept/Oct 2010 issue

I do think that The Social Network is about losing friends. And that was what had happened to me. I didn’t relate to Eduardo and Mark, but more, understand. And been understood. There was something about the way this movie portrayed friends that I felt no movie had understood. (At least, in my own experiences Although, if you asked me now, I might give you a different answer.) This loving and losing. Even though I was only thirteen, I’d had so many old friends slide away from me. I’d spent the entirety of that summer ignored by two of the people I’d considered to be my best friends. They left me alone without an explanation, without another word, and I spent all summer wondering what I had done wrong. But I had Mollie. (Until, of course, I didn’t.)

I’ve watched many movies about death and grief. They’re everywhere. In movies with love, there is always grief. But none of them understood me like The Social Network. One of my tragedies with Mollie’s death was that I loved her so much. It built up in me, and then, there was no where to put it. The love wasn’t suddenly just gone, and I couldn’t get rid of it. No matter what, it still existed it me, and I couldn’t just give it away, because this love was for Mollie.

And The Social Network, in it’s own weird way (or just the way that I understood it), had this too. When you love someone so much, but even that it not enough to save them. And then, even after all the terrible stuff happens, the love is still there. Mark leaves Eduardo to go to California with Sean, but still, Eduardo goes when Mark calls him. It’s like Mark is a part of him, tied together. And Mark needs him still. And even after Mollie’s death, I still needed her. I longed for her. She was an everything kind of person to me, where I loved her always, for everything that she was.

And the thing about it was, I couldn’t get anyone to understand this attachment to this movie, why I watched it so much. My dad told me that he liked The Social Network too, but he didn’t like it how I liked it. I mean, it really was just a movie about stupid Mark Zuckerberg. I don’t want to say that I know The Social Network more than anymore, but I do think that I know it more than any teenager should.

It just comes down to the simple fact that it brought me comfort. I found comfort in the weirdest things, just because I knew them. And I felt like they spoke back to me, just a little bit. And that was all I needed. I’d just lost someone who knew me, and to replace that feeling, I picked a movie that I could shape to match my feelings.

The Social Network is one of my favourite movies of all time. And not just because it has two of my favourite performances ever, or because I love David Fincher. All these things are true, but it’s not just that. It knows me, and I know it. And, when I was thirteen, it made me feel less alone. And that was everything.