Mood swings

[bktheirregular]

Sometimes, you can feel yourself teetering on the edge of ... I don't know what the proper medical or psych term is for it, so I'll just call it a "depressive slump" - when your mood just suddenly seems to nosedive for no logical reason that you can discern.

Almost hit me this morning. Isolation tends to be a bit of a trigger for me - there's only so much talking to voicemail machines and listening to phones ring without ever being picked up that I can manage before I begin to wonder: should I just give up? Is it just bad luck and bad timing, or is it something more fundamentally wrong with me?

Seeing a movie about someone who, for the sake of his career, basically turns his family and personal life into an emotional postapocalyptic wasteland doesn't help.

Maybe part of it is that, for all my family roots here, all too often I'm still a stranger in a strange land. And in the process, I'm losing my grip on everything I had back home. (This post was originally triggered by a thought: is it possible to fall out of fandom so completely that you leave no trace, as though you'd never been?)

Comments

[twistedchick]

It's very difficult to move to a new place for work, and try to rebuild your life. I've done it three times, and it had horrible days each time. It's disorienting. Be kind to yourself. Don't beat yourself up over anything. Do something that makes you feel good, whether it's trying the new baklava at the corner taverna or going for a walk to look at the Temple of Athene. And for God's sake go see a more cheerful movie! Movies that are depressing are like emotional leeches when you're feeling on the borderline. Do something that makes you happy.

[bktheirregular]

I wish I'd known going in that "The Good Shepherd" would be such a downer of a movie. I would have spent my money on something else. (Though the only other choice in movies around here seems to be "300"...)

[twistedchick]

Athens is a big place. Aren't there any theatres that show classic movies, or second-run something, or small art houses showing obscure Bollywood stuff? Or little theatre groups doing Aristophanes 'The Frogs'?

[bktheirregular]

true enough. but finding stuff like that can also be a problem. especially when one's language skills are, to put it politely, borderline. the sort that can get one taken for a bleeping mark by hustlers on the street.

[twistedchick]

A friend of ours was an exchange student in Greece, years back. She got separated from the rest of her group, which were supposed to meet at a famous monastery. So she started asking people, "Pou e moni?" which she thought meant "Where is the monastery?" But she was mispronouncing the last word, which meant she was asking people to find part of her anatomy. It was not a happy situation.