Made An Account For This Website Just To Post This.

I only just heard the term anhedonia for the first time in my life about 2 or 3 weeks ago, and ever since then my life's gotten a little better for it. Finding this website and reading these stories and comments has played a huge part in it getting better too. To know exactly what's wrong with you, that it can be fixed, and that you're not alone is always a great relief.

Within the next week, it will have been exactly 2 years that I've been suffering from this.. And every bit of it has been nothing short of horrendous 24/7. I don't remember the exact date or time when it happened, but I do remember when it happened. It was just another normal day. Nothing was wrong, and I was just feeling pretty good for no real reason at all. Which I was fine with. I remember playing a game I was currently hooked on at the time that morning and it was still as awesome as always. Don't remember much else that happened that day except for when I was walking down the hallway and happened to catch a glimpse of the news that my mom was watching. Not even 10 seconds of it I listened to. I don't remember what was said, and I'm not sure now if I was even really paying attention. All I know is out of nowhere, it was like there was a sudden click in my head. And I this huge sense of unknown dread just began to take hold of me, and I stood there frozen for a couple seconds wondering just what the hell happened. I kept going on and tried to shake it off and act like it was nothing but in the back of my mind I couldn't really lie to myself.

Something very bad was happening.

After a bit I just figured I'd go back to playing that game again. That'll calm me down and probably get rid of whatever it was that was happening. Yeah that's it. I just need to relax is all. Started playing it. And within about 10 minutes I just had to stop. "This isn't fun anymore for some reason." Hadn't even been a full 24 hours and suddenly something went from being a blast to just flat out boring. What the hell? What the actual hell?

A couple weeks into this I was in my room just pacing back and forth, aggravated, with only one question racing in my mind.

"What the hell is wrong with me?!"

Nothing feels right, my thoughts don't seem to be my own, and almost anything at all makes me miserable. Why? Why why why!? Even talking to my own family just brings me down no matter what we're talking about. Whether it's my dad telling me about his day, my brother wanting to tell me something funny, or my mom telling me how bad her day was at work, I'm just left standing there, not caring about any of it in the slightest, and not having even a hint of a clue what to say to any of them. And not in a mean way. More like in a dumbfounded way. And damn it this had to be figured out and fixed.

So there I am in my room, frustrated as hell because I can't figure it out. I just can't ******* figure it out. Eventually I just tell myself "Stop! Just calm down! You can't figure this out yet so there's no point in still trying right now. Just go do something. Get your mind off of it."

Yeah ok. Just do something. What should I do? Hundreds of ideas kept rushing in my head all at once, each one sounding more terrible than the last. Next thing I know I'm more miserable than I was before, and I'm telling myself to stop again.

"Breath. Take a second, and breath, and clear your mind. And think. What do you legitimately want to do. Think about what that is, and just go do it."

Ok. Simple enough. I calm down. My mind seems clear. So what do I want to do? The first thing that pops in my mind that gives me that urge to want to do it, I'll go do it. So I just stand there for a minute. Nothing. And after another minute, I found out the only thing I really want to do. And it's still probably one of the saddest moments of my life.

"All I want to do, is just sit in the corner, curled up in a little ball, and wait for everything to end."

I didn't want to kill myself. I just wanted to wait for everything to end. Whether it was dying first, or the apocalypse happening. It didn't matter. I just wanted it all gone. 

Nothing was worth doing, and the only thing worth doing was nothing.

And that's when it finally hit me. Nothing's fun anymore. And I don't know why. But how could nothing be fun anymore? And especially so suddenly? That makes no sense! And how could it? I don't know. But it just was what it was.

And after a while I realized having fun wasn't the only thing that left me. Since nothing was fun, nothing was interesting all of a sudden. Since nothing was interesting, I didn't care about anything or anyone anymore. And since I really didn't care about anything, I felt nothing. About anything. Or at least next to nothing. I now have a better understanding of all this, and even though I realize I can still feel a bit of emotions, at the time it was no different than feeling nothing. Apathy was the only thing that existed in my world. And not much has changed since.

In the beginning I would try to think about this stuff so hard that within a couple hours I would have pretty bad headaches and I would just have to stop for a bit. Now I look back on it and wonder if it was my reward system breaking down at the time. Sometimes I would think I was getting better, then shortly after realize I was getting my hopes up.

Like pretty much everyone else, I loved watching movies, TV shows, and listening to music. But now? TV shows I just gave up on. Movies I had to break it up into segments lasting about 20 or 30 minutes. And it could take a couple days to finish one movie. And music? It's just noise. Nothing that great. Even my favorite band. Doing anything and everything is a chore that's never worth completing.

And nothing was or has been more worse than hanging out with people. If I'm with just one person, then I'm good. Not because I'm happy, but only because I'm not miserable. But if it's more than that, then I'm just feeling awful. They're wanting to do things, and talk about things that aren't fun, that aren't interesting, and just flat out get on my nerves. They get on my nerves partly because they're not fun and interesting, but mainly it gets on my nerves because in the end I know that I'm wrong. It really all is interesting and fun. But for some reason I just can't see it that way. And I want to. I want to so badly. They're all having so much fun doing the simplest things, talking about the simplest things (something I use to love to do), and they're just being happy, something I only vaguely remember. And I try. I try so damn hard. All the time. But nothing ever works, and it usually ends up making me feel worse.

There's so much I'm missing now, and so much that I just miss in general. I miss having fun. I miss having interests. I miss being happy. I miss being driven to do something. I miss people. I miss feeling connected with people. I miss the old me. I just miss life. Life and everything that's great about it. I use to think I hated life, what with how awful it can be, and I thought I hated people too, what with how awful they could be too. But now I realize I much I honestly loved life, and how much I just loved people. Even simply being with them was fun in itself. Now, to me, that seems like a luxury. In the end there's a million things I want, but if I really had to chose only one, then all I would want is just to enjoy a moment of somebody's time again. To me, to have that would be more than a miracle. More than a blessing. I can't even imagine how it will be to have that experience again. It would honestly feel like my own bit of Heaven to tell you the truth.

There's a million other things I wanna say but I feel like I've already said a million things at this point, so I'm gonna end it with just two more things. If you have any questions you can just ask me.

I'm getting better finally. Like I said in the beginning just knowing what this is has helped alone. If I'm with people are doing something, and I'm trying to enjoy it, and I begin to feel frustrated again because it just won't work, I now just remind myself "Stop it. Just stop it. You can't help it no matter what you do and you're only making it worse." And just like that the frustration's gone and I'm calmer and things are easier all of a sudden. Plus I've been taking 3 or 4 pills of L-glutamine a day for the past week, and I think that's already beginning to help. A few days after I first started taking them I noticed that I had this weird nervous feeling for no reason but in a good way. Like anticipation or excitement. And it was for nothing in general. It wasn't a strong feeling but it was still something. The first I've felt like that in 2 years. And just yesterday I woke up for the first time in 2 years without that dreadful sense of hopelessness automatically in my mind. Those are very good signs, people. Very, very good signs. If this stuff doesn't show anything more promising by the end of the month though then I'll be seeing a doctor. There's no other option by that point.

And lastly, this will be to people who aren't, nor ever have experienced anhedonia, if you're even on here.

You will never be able to comprehend what it's like to go through this, and that's a good thing. You'll never be able to make sense of it, and that's because you've never been through it. You can't truly understand what you don't experience, especially when it's something so contrary to what comes to you naturally anyway. Not only that, but even after dealing with it for 2 years, I still can't make sense out of it. And you know why? Because it's not suppose to make sense. It just is what it is. Trying to make sense of it is nothing but taking a pointless, endless path to nowhere, and it only causes more trouble for you in the end. So please, everybody, try not to make any logical sense out of this. Because there's no such thing as "sense" when it comes to all of this.