Groundhog Day

When I think of films that have really captured the experience of depression,  Groundhog Day is at the top of the list. It’s not meant to be about depression as far as I know. The main character, Phil played by Bill Murray, does get depressed as a result of his circumstances. Yet its the very circumstances that feel like a metaphor for depression not that the cause of it. Being trapped in the same day indefinitely and feeling as if any action you take is ineffectual resonates with me. Every night I go to bed and hope that tomorrow will be more productive, or that I will finally stumble upon the compass to righting my neurological course. I’m confined by forces that I don’t understand and have no control over so I just keep going day after day after day, adjusting my actions to make my experience a teeny  bit better but with little hope of a breakthrough. Some nights I wonder whether I can make it one more day, but I wake up the next day and start the process anew. And at the end of a depressive episode, it really is like waking up to what seemed a tomorrow forever in the distance.  While I have yet to be able to take up the piano or fall in love during a depression, the first two-thirds of that film mirror the reality of depression.