Just watched Another Year which I found to be utterly depressing. A few critics found it simply boring, but I thought it was brilliantly written and acted. And it was the brilliance with which the message was delivered that made it so damn depressing.
The message being, more or less, that happy people stay happy, and the rest of us stay miserable.
My biggest fear in all of this recovery business is that I'll find at the end of it that what was set in motion in my life will simply continue to play out. And that thought is just depressing, isn't it? That whatever neurotic tendencies I have now, I've had in the past (which led me to the decisions I made), and I will have in the future. For many years I had this believe that striving and trying and working would get me over some hill, and once crested I'd get to coast for a while.
After I graduated from college (as a returning student) and met Roi, I really really thought, here it is, here is the crest of the hill. Foot of the pedal now, I can coast. The downward slope turned out to have an entirely different meaning. It meant momentum without brakes and crashing into a broken pile at the bottom. And somewhere on that ride my thinking shifted to this idea that no matter how hard I tried, it would always keep coming to this.
And I suppose that's when I got depressed. First there was frantic back-pedaling, but then it just seemed like too much effort. So when a film-maker creates such a disturbingly accurate portrayal of "the more things change, the more they stay the same", it's hard to not resign to it.
Therapy tomorrow. Amen.
Oh, goodness, I don't think I'd have the stomach to watch this. Especially not now. No.
ReplyDeleteSome would say we have lessons to learn, and until then....well, we repeat various scenarios with striking similarities.
Hurrah for therapy, though.
All I knew was that the movie had gotten awards and good reviews and I was bored so I watched it. Big mistake.
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