'Something Borrowed' Taught Me So Many Lessons

There are many movies I love so much that I can watch them over and over again, but there's one that I return to far more frequently than the rest: Something Borrowed, based on the book by Emily Giffin and starring Ginnifer Goodwin and Kate Hudson. The film, if you're not familiar, is about Rachel (Goodwin), a 30-year-old attorney living in New York, and her lifelong best friend, Darcy (Hudson). If you haven't see this movie, I implore you to immediately, because Something Borrowed made me the woman I am today.

Having grown up together, Darcy and Rachel are inseparable — Darcy is even marrying Rachel's law school study buddy Dex (oh, hello Colin Egglesfield). Rounding out the group is the wonderful John Krasinski, who plays Rachel's childhood friend Ethan, an equal parts obnoxious and adorable buddy. Rachel's life might seem perfect from the outside — she has a great job, she lives in the big city, and has a solid group of friends — but she's inwardly struggling with the fact that her best friend is engaged to the guy she's been in love with for years. Yep: Dex. The trouble really starts when Rachel goes for drinks with Dex after her birthday party, and... well, you can guess what happens, next right?

Something Borrowed is such an important movie for me because it's unlike other rom-coms. I unashamedly love romantic comedies, but this film really seems to show just how messy life can be. Instead of having a stereotypical plot featuring a couple who get together, break up, then reunite before the credits roll, Something Borrowed is about what happens when you have to choose between friendship and love. It also routinely dishes out life lessons about how you tell real friends apart from the rest, and how you know you're with the right person.

I also relate to Rachel so hard, because I know firsthand that turning 30 can be brutal. I don't mean that getting older is terrible, because it's not — it's just that there's an expectation that comes with aging, and 30 is a particular milestone. When I turned 30, my life fell apart: I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Instead of knowing what I was planning to do with my future, I felt completely directionless. Rachel's journey throughout the movie helped me so much, and it made me realize it's OK not to have everything figured out.

So many of Rachel's problems stem from her friendship with Darcy. While the two have known each other forever, their friendship is, in many ways, superficial, and Darcy doesn't always look out for Rachel's best interests. For instance, despite knowing that Rachel liked Dex, Darcy hit on him — which, I think you'll agree, is a pretty awful thing to do. But, having her best friend date the guy she likes turned out to be an important life lesson for Rachel: She realized that she'd spent years being somewhat of a doormat, and realized that she deserves to be happy.

Happiness is a really difficult thing to quantify, and it's even more difficult to achieve. As Rachel comes to realize that she's responsible for her own happiness and no one else's, she learns that she has to fight for what she wants. She also realizes that by taking the backseat for much of her life, she missed out on so many things. Regardless of the outcome, there's a certain power that comes with taking control of your life back, and doing what you want to do. You only live once, and pretending you're OK with something when you're not OK with it is no way to live.

Not everyone will agree with me on this one, but in my opinion Something Borrowed is an inspirational film. It helped me make some of the toughest decisions of my life, and to stop accepting the behaviors of other people that were actually unacceptable. It's really difficult to change your life, but it's possible — and this film helped me realize that.

Images: Giphy; Warner Bros. Pictures