Would You Get Off the Plane for Me?

Have you ever heard the expression "Getting off the plane for someone"? 

Maybe not, probably because I'm pretty sure I made it up. 

Have you ever seen the movie Garden State?

(If you haven't you need to. Right now)

Anyway, Garden State is an amazing, sad, sweet movie about finding your real self, and falling in love. At the end (spoiler alert, sorry) Zach Braff tells Natalie Portman that he has to go back home to California, from New Jersey where he met her, while he was visiting his hometown for his mother's funeral.. (Weird, I know, try to stay with me). While he had been home, they'd fallen in love. She was understandably upset, and didn't want him to go, but he was convinced he had to. He had issues, and felt like the best way to work them out was on his own. He was determined to go back to California, so he leaves poor Natalie Portman alone in the airport, ugly crying her eyes out, and he gets on the plane.

As he's sitting there, he realizes, he's leaving behind the only person who he's ever really loved, the only person who's ever made him feel alive and real, and who understood him. 

And what does Mr. Braff do?

He gets off the plane.

He goes running through the airport.

He finds Natalie, ugly crying in a phone booth, and he tells her he loves her, and she's all he wants. 

And they kiss. 

And y'all, it is magical. I mean, brings tears to your eyes, warms your heart and makes you hate your life because nothing that beautiful and dramatic has ever happened to you, magical. 

The point of all of this, is that when I first saw this movie, I totally hated myself and my life because I had never experienced that kind of love and devotion. No one had ever "gotten off the plane for me" and I was left thinking that men just don't do those things. That NOBODY gets off the plane for you, and it was more of that stupid Hollywood romance bullshit, and I was crying over an imaginary idea. 

And sure, maybe in some ways, it is over sensationalized Hollywood bullshit, but in some ways, it's not. It's exactly what everyone deserves. Not just girls, guys too. 

Everyone deserves someone who would get off the proverbial plane for them.

Someone who loves them enough to choose them over what they thought they wanted. 

To stand up, and put their love and their relationship first. 

Relationships don't survive just because two people love each other.

They survive the little stuff, the day to day stuff, and the occasional not so little stuff, because one of the two people in the relationship will choose to put love first, put down whatever they were stupidly clinging to, and "get off the plane" for the sake of the relationship. 

If no one ever did that, simply loving someone wouldn't be enough. 

And the relationship that love made, would wither and die.

If you're not with the person who would get off the plane for you, no matter what you're telling yourself, or how good things might seem, they're not your answer.