Living With Anhedonia

What is anhedonia?

My therapist said it's having a lack of joy in doing things that normally brought you joy.

Shortly after finding out about the memes listening to music did nothing for me. No singing along, no toe tapping, absolutely nothing.

I used to watch Walking Dead when new episodes aired every Sunday night. I even had a ritual of making my weekly pizza before it came on. That all stopped. Episodes piled up on the DVR for weeks before I even had the urge or inclination to watch them. 

Even now I'm months behind on Gotham, Flash, and Supergirl. Total loss of interest. 

Reading has been a big one. Books and comics alike the urge to read just evaporated. It's just not there. 

There are times when I don't know what I want to do, and I feel like doing nothing. No music, no TV, no reading, and no art.

Even doing my art has become a struggle because of this. When I was in a gallery it gave me something positive to focus on...but no longer being in a gallery there was less reason to produce new works, and my depression got worse. The anhedonia got worse.

Even cleaning the house goes by the wayside sometimes for months. I know it needs done. I want to do it. Then something in my head delays it. 

I even lose my appetite. I haven't even ate today. There was even a time for a few weeks when anhedonia struck my love of pizza. I got to the point where pizza didn't cut it. I was giving away my left overs to my neighbors. 

I got so bad that last year there were months I just did absolutely nothing. It was bad. So much so that it changed my mind about trying medicine.

I was very weary about any medication that alters my brain chemistry. And I should've never taken the equivalent of one pill of generic Zoloft.

It made things worse by taking away my ability to dream, to daydream, to imagine at all. I could no longer even hear myself think. No imagining while listening to music. It's like it robbed me of my soul. 

During that time I wasn't emotionally suicidal. No, this was more cold, calculated, and logical. I didn't want to live that way. My quality of life was sanitized. It took away the good and the bad at the same time. 

It took months to recover. I'm not fully back to how I used to be though. Especially creatively.

Every single day is a struggle. It sucks.