I met a guy from France today. His name is Jean-Michel (big surprise), and he's here with the Baptist Collegiate Ministry. Ignoring the fact that he's a missionary, he's really quite nice and is very interested in meeting lots of people here in Terre Haute. He has been in the Haute for a little over a week now, so he has seen quite the range of Indiana weather: huge snowfall followed by a day of warm sunshine, then drizzly grey rain for days now cooling off into freezing temperatures again. He's from Paris, however, so the greyness isn't new to him. I got to thinking about it, and it's nothing new to me either (being a Hoosier), and it made me think about Rennes where I lived for about half a year.
Grey, drizzly, rainy, overcast, windy, cloudy, foggy, wet. That's Rennes. I saw maybe a dozen days where the sun came out in the morning and stayed out (mostly) for the rest of the day. Occasionally, during an afternoon here and there, the sun would peek out for an hour or two, but it was soon covered up by grey stratus clouds once more. That's just how the weather is in northern France: grey. Those movies where you see Paris with beautiful blue skies? They had to wait days on that footage or go back and edit it in, believe me. Jean-Michel mentioned how this weather is normal to him, and when I was in France, it was normal for me too. It never froze, and it never got really hot; it just rained.
Now, don't mistake me as saying that I'm fine with this weather because I'm used to it. I'm not, believe me. Even if my life were going smoothly and everything were fine, the constant grey would erode my mental stability until I spend entire afternoons and evenings just lying in bed contemplating the irritation of existence. When my life is rocky and everything is going wrong (much like right now), it precludes days upon weeks of a deep funk (which can deteriorate into depression) where gloom alone drives my thoughts. I put on a sweet face for co-workers and classmates, but inside I'm wailing and writhing on a grey concrete floor flooded with the deluge of apathy and anxiety, wishing that the skies would clear and give me some reason to look up from the pathetic pain I endure inside. I'm not very fond of this weather. There was some sun Sunday which brought back a bit of the Erin Doyle everyone knows and loves, but it was so fleeting that the greyness since has erased it from my emotional memory. Winter can last only so long (at least in this part of the country), so there is that to look forward to. Until then, I'll try to preoccupy myself with memories of castles and beaches and strawberry tarts. That part of France helped me weather the rain.
Posted: January 13, 2005 at twenty after three.