I've been sitting here for the better part of two months, trying to convince myself that it's well past time that I get back to working on all the projects that are competing for space on and around my desk.
Same goes for the shelves full of all the movies I love, but can't bring myself to watch, and the playlists of all the music I love, but can't bring myself to listen to except when I'm at the gym working out.
If there's one way I can say that Depression has changed me since my breakdown in 2011, and don't think for a second I take any measure of pride by coming clean with this, it's that all seemingly all the things I used to enjoy doing, all the things I used to self-identify with, and gravitate to, and be an unabashed nerd about...
...none of them matter all that much to me anymore.
I didn't realize there was an actual term for this sort of situation, but it turns out it's listed in the dictionary as Anhedonia, which is just a $2.50 word that means, "The inability to feel pleasure."
Editorial Note: In hindsight, it makes sense that there would be such an antonym for Hedonism, but given our proclivity to pursue a hedonistic lifestyle at all costs, I suppose it's easy to let its counterpoint slip by the goalie.
In a lot of ways, it feels totally surreal because for the majority of my life, all those things I enjoyed were avenues I used to try and escape from whatever emotional strife I was dealing with at the time.
I could either bury myself in a book, get lost in a movie or one of the dozens of comp tapes I'd made, or either crack open another spiral notebook or sit at my computer and just let all the things I didn't want to say or know how to deal with spill out through my fingers.
But when you start waking up day after day and finding that those avenues are now seemingly closed off due to the unilateral decision of your own mind that there's no point in going there anymore...?!
Because, honestly, when you feel like you've been told over and over and over again that what you think, what you know, what you like, what you love, and what has come to define you on certain levels as a person doesn't matter to those same people who's perspective, thoughts, feelings and attitudes toward you are of significant emotional value...?!
Well, to paraphrase an old CCR tune...,"Ho lord, stuck in Anhedonia ug-gain."
To be fair, while going through the Year of Hell which I found myself in during 2017, there were times when I felt I was getting those pieces of emotional enjoyment back through a combined regiment of necessity and repetition. Considering most of my days were spent sitting in the local Starbucks or on the T passing the time waiting for work to start, and my nights were spent sprawled out on my severely uncomfortable makeshift bed in the back of my Jeep, having whatever means of escape I could get my hands on was beyond essential to just get from one terrifying day to the next.
When I came out the other side though, the reservoir, as best as I could tell, had finally run dry.
What I've found to be my primary outlets for emotional escape now is either getting lost on YouTube watching other people do the sorts of things I'd wanted to for the past few years, only to have the window of opportunity slam shut, or just turn on my PS4, load up the game No Man's Sky, and escape into galaxies full of 19 quintillion planets that look nothing like Earth...and neither do their inhabitants.
When I was a kid and in the midst of discovering the things I'd grow to be passionate about, I never even considered the notion that they either could or would leave me some day.
Then again, I had no way to foresee that this was how my life was going to go, either. That I would find myself only feeling safe and comfortable in the limited floor space of the house I currently share, and that creating things or doing any artistic or cultural endeavor that calls for me to interact with people for that matter, felt anathema to my existence.
The most basic answer to why this happened, of course, is to point to my Depression and how its come to take over said existence in the last 7-8 years...but that also feels like going after low-hanging fruit.
I can't help but shake the thought that there's more at play here. That it's both a byproduct of the signals I'm getting internally from my own frazzled mind and the external demands, spoken and unspoken, from all sides to just stop trying to get out of this state of creative apathy and non-existence.
The problem is that I can't stay here forever. I know that and have known it for a while. But then there's the rub of trying to figure out what the point of escaping from anhedonia when it feels like no one really wants you to?
Or worse yet...that it won't change anything?
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