Monday, December 20, 2010

The Looming Gloom

Do you ever feel like crying for no reason? Does the urge to break down in tears ever hit you without really knowing why? I’ve been feeling very lost and sad lately, but in as much as the sadness has been acute, it has also been equally without logical justification. I can’t say why I’ve been feeling so gray, but that doesn’t make it any less real or frightening.

You might say that I’m much like San Francisco, and my mood much like its weather. I never know what each day will bring, and the range is quite bizarre. There are those seemingly random days where the sun shines brilliantly and all is warm and bright. On those days, my spirits are up and the whole world around me is abuzz with activity and expectation. But as every SF native knows, those days are rare and fleeting, and soon the city will return itself to its most common caliginous state. A fog settles over me and everything seems to grow dull and dreary. Colors lose their vibrancy, goals become hazy, even people seem less interesting. And above all, motivation for forward movement feels exceptionally bleak.

When days like this hit, and they do hit often, I’ve often found solace in the perfectly packaged bliss of a good predictable film. So with this new development of inexplicable depression, I’ve been watching many such movies in an effort to… well I don’t know what, really. Usually, I say it’s an escape from the troubles of my own life, a chance to immerse myself in someone else’s problems for a while. But the truth is, maybe that’s not it at all. Maybe it’s that I don’t even know what my problems are, so I watch these movies to see if mine might relate to what the characters suffer from. Perhaps these films might jog my memory or give more purpose to my own.  Or maybe I’d just rather adopt their fictional reasons for being sad, so that when I cry, I actually know what the hell I’m crying for. It may not be the healthiest thing to do, and I’m sure someone will tell me I’m just avoiding the real issue, and rather ought to buck up and face my own issues than try to drown them in someone else’s imagination.

But at this moment, and in the moments I’m watching those movies, I just want to believe in this feeling that I’m actually getting somewhere, anywhere, through the looming gloom. And right now, I’m going to say that any progress is good progress.