Nobody Cares

 Oh yes dear reader, whatever exhaustive, depressive episode I've been going through still isn't over. After remembering that I basically have to start and finish an IA by...  basically tomorrow, take the mock and final test for a college entrance exam before the day after that, and then deal with my hindi orals next week, I suddenly fell back into my lethargy.

No, I promise this won't just be a trauma dump, instead it will be me talking about a musical that reminded me of the dredge of everyday existence. That is of course, Groundhog day: The Musical. Yes folks, this is a real thing and it's actually very good. I've been obsessed with this musical since I was in 9th grade, and often found myself sobbing to 'Hope' of all songs. Listen, I don't know what could've been going on to make a 13 year old jam to a song about repeatedly trying to end your life, but it wasn't pretty. 

Groundhog Day largely follows the plot of the movie, following a weather guy named Phil Connors as he reports on a small town called Punxsutawney. This town is special because of the tradition called Groundhog Day, where a groundhog predicts the coming of spring. Phil, being a deeply unpleasant human being at the start of the show, hates everything about it, the town, the people, the tradition, the forced cheer. He goes to sleep the night before the big day thinking he’s above it all.

And then he wakes up.

And it’s February 2nd again.

And again.

And again.

If you’ve seen the film, you know the premise. If you haven’t, here’s the gist, Phil gets trapped in a time loop, forced to relive the same day endlessly. No consequences. No progression. No escape. Just the same alarm clock, the same song on the radio, the same forced small-town enthusiasm.

Now tell me that doesn’t feel like exam season.

What makes Groundhog Day: The Musical so devastatingly brilliant is how it takes that comedic premise and digs into something much darker. The first act is funny, Phil uses the time loop for chaos and indulgence. He eats what he wants, says whatever he wants, and even manipulates people. I guess you could say he was Phil-andering. Get it? His actions are pretty deplorable, but they're unhinged in a way that’s just a bit entertaining. In a way, it's cathartic, appealing to the part inside all of us that fantasizes about a life with zero consequences. 

But then Act Two hits.

Because when nothing changes, the comedy starts fading into deep despair. Phil spirals. He tries to break the loop in increasingly reckless ways. He isolates himself. He gives up.

And that’s where “Hope” comes in.

“Hope” is not subtle. It’s not poetic. Phil promises to never give up hope, but not in a usual happy way. Instead, he vows to try to end his own life in any way he can and never give up trying to die. When I first heard it at thirteen, I didn’t fully understand why it wrecked me. Now I do. It captures that exact feeling of being stuck, when you're suffocated by expectations.

You wake up. You study. You panic. You sleep. You wake up. Repeat.

Groundhog Day doesn’t glamorize that spiral. It shows how dangerous it is to believe nothing will ever change. But, and this is why I keep coming back to it, it also insists that change doesn’t come from grand gestures. Phil doesn’t escape the loop by dying, or by performing some dramatic heroic act. He escapes it by choosing small kindness. By learning piano. By helping someone change a tire. By genuinely caring about people he once dismissed.

He escapes by becoming better.

And that’s the part that makes me sob in a slightly less concerning way now.

Because when I’m staring at my IA draft at 2 a.m., convinced I will never escape the cycle of academic doom, Groundhog Day reminds me that progress isn’t always explosive. Sometimes it’s incremental. Sometimes it’s just choosing to get up and try again, even if yesterday felt like a failure.

Phil’s loop is extreme, but the metaphor is painfully real. We all have periods where life feels repetitive and meaningless and exhausting. The musical doesn’t deny that. It leans into it. It lets you sit in the dread. But it reminds you, that repetition cannot be forever, what if tomorrow is different?

So no, this isn’t a trauma dump. It’s a love letter to a show that met me in my worst spirals and handed me something fragile but necessary.

Hope.

This pain isn't forever, it's just my Punxsutawney season. So fine. I’ll learn the piano. I'll help a stranger. I’ll write my EE. I’ll survive the orals.

Because after all, February 2nd won’t last forever.