Anhedonia

Someone hugged me a while back, looked me in the face, and said, "You're looking a lot better than you were a few weeks ago." I was a bit surprised, because I didn't know I hadn't been well, besides the onslaught of the usually unnoticeable health problems (seriously, who notices from your face that you're not doing well when your back hurts?). A week later, this picture was taken on a day when I thought I was doing really well:
















And now I understand. I could say it's just a bad picture, or that I'm just really pale, or that I should have learned my lesson wearing white a long time ago (an institute teacher thought I had been really sick and said it must have been the white), or that I was tired, or that I'd been reading too many vampire books (Dracula and The Historian), or that I was busy concentrating on the piano piece. But take a look at my eyes.

I look like I'm on the edge of a breakdown.




And maybe I was.

Maybe I am.

Maybe I'm already deep in it.

Why do I tell you this? I have no idea. I certainly don't want pity and I certainly don't believe anyone can help me out of it, when I can't get myself to want to do anything to get out of it.

People seem to think that depression has to have one big reason, and that that reason is usually individuals having too high expectations of themselves. In other words, they think that perfectionism has driven them over the wall, meaning they are now eternally sad. But that's not my experience. My experience involves repeated bouts of complete lack of feeling for what seems like no reason.

Anhedonia would make a beautiful name, if only it didn't indicate what it does. I only recently found out about this term for this recurring depression symptom of mine. I'd just been thinking of it as "absolut keine Lust." It's a numbness that gets to me and threatens all well-intended plans, because all I want to do is never do anything ever again. The word "crippling" is too physical. "Debilitating" as well. Maybe "emotionally deadening" would be closer, but it doesn't do justice to how harmful anhedonia's effects are. (And for me it's accompanied by dissociation, depersonalization, and derealization. I guess you could say I have ADDD.)

I wish I could really share with you what it's like. Think of all those book characters that just stopped living, though their hearts were still beating, and you might get an idea--Esther Greenwood (The Bell Jar), Holden Caulfield (Catcher in the Rye), M.S. Fogg (Moon Palace), and Anna Morgan (Voyage in the Dark), and last name-less Jack (American Purgatorio).

I want to be able to deal with this recurring issue instead of always being again and again reached by it. I want to be able to figure it out now, without medicine, because I won't always have five or six months where I can just crash and isn't the purpose of life to have joy?

But being so numb that nothing appeals to you and nothing has a purpose doesn't help you figure anything out. And it exacerbates every other normal problem. For example, your money dwindles but you have no motivation to do anything about it. You know that having someone there for you might help, but you're not attractive to people in that state, and they can't awaken any feeling in you either. And these problems turn into vicious circles. If you don't want to do anything, your health turns bad because of lack of exercise, and because of your bad health, you are even more deadened to the world (a.k.a. depressed) and less inclined to exercise (which is supposedly a mood booster, though I think of it more as a temporary stress shedder, but who has stress when they have no feeling?).

And there are all these levels of thinking, where you know that things are getting worse, but you have no desire nor ability to react. And somewhere deep inside you wish you could do something, but you are too indifferent about everything to be able to do anything. You think of the real you, who likes to get things done and who now avoids any responsibility and shuns any social interaction whatsoever. But anhedonia has become you. You have become anhedonia.

Sometimes you don't even look at your planner to see what is scheduled or what you could get done on your to-do list. You have days where you know you should be proud of yourself for accomplishing something, anything, but the next morning you spend full minutes looking into your eyes in the mirror and you find nothing there. No reaction. No emotion. No passing thought. And you spend the day lying still, looking up at the ceiling, or gazing at nothing at all out the window. And something inside says that you should do something, that you should be disappointed in yourself, but you can't move. So much of it is about time. Passing. Passing. Passing. All you can do is wait.

I realize all these things should be negative, at least by the standards of the world, and that's why I can only write about them in negative terms, which throws you off. You think, "But she sounds really frustrated, she can't really be without feeling, can she?" But feeling that frustration is not possible. It's like watching a slow-motion movie from under water and being able to make some slow-motion thoughts about what the characters are doing, but not doing anything about it or being able to. How do you explain, on terms that aren't related to frustration, that you can be frustrated without being frustrated? Here is where language fails.

This is my battle. But again, that word is too active. This is my passive surrender that doesn't feel like a surrender at all. It is happening without me being involved in the matter and without any clear enemy. I have an understanding now somewhere inside me of what others I know have gone through, not that it "comforts" me to know others have gone through the same. (Yet another word attached to emotion! It's not to be escaped. It is a part of life. It is a part of language.) Maybe that's why I have to struggle too, so that I can learn to be more sympathetic in the times when I have feeling.

I've always noticed that when I least want to be with people is when I need them the most. And my strong beliefs force me to be with people at church at least three times a week where I can forget about myself and smile at people, so no worries there. I'm forcing myself to take care of myself. I'm training twice a week and eating more vegetables than I ever have in my life. I'm not going to die from this, at least not physically. But am I going to be able to really live and feel it? Even asking that question evokes no feeling. I'd just like a "no" and a way to live off of no income and with no schedule and no social interactions. (Hello, not possible.)



Or a "yes."