Anhedonia

 


"Nothing really happens to him when he gets drunk."

A common reaction from my friends the past 3 years. And a very different reaction to what people used to say about me 10 years ago.

Obviously there will be a lot of differences between getting drunk as a teenager and as someone who is almost 30 but this is a part of a recurring theme about myself in recent years - I don't enjoy things we way I used to.

Origins

It all kind of started 7 years ago. Intern year. Right in the middle of it, I found myself with 0 bank balance and having to take care of a bedridden father who needed constant support.

That was when I started sacrificing parts of myself. No more eating out. Not much hanging out with friends. No going out to movies. The TV subscription was a luxury not meant for every month. Even going to and fro from peripheral postings was too expensive at certain points and I had to take extension later on to compensate.

Now this didn't feel that draining in the first few years because it felt that I was doing all of this for a greater good - to take care of my father.

But then after a year or so, we got kicked out out of our house. My father passed away after a few months. Everything I'd tried to do the previous 2 years seemed to have failed. I had reached rock bottom.

Covid

Few months after my father passed, Covid 19 first came to India. So I was stuck at home, alone, for most of the time with very little in terms of human interaction. I'd go to get supplies once a week and that would be it.

I was supposed to be preparing for the post-graduate entrance exam but I found myself going nuts after a few months so I volunteered for Covid duty. Partly out of a sense of responsibility and partly to just have a sense of purpose in life again.

But even then, I can't say I was particularly enjoying my job at that point. The travel was long - 35 away from my home. It was tiring. Being the juniormost doctor in the hospital during Covid time was not easy. My PG prep got delayed a few more months than it perhaps would have been.

Furthermore, while my financial situation started to improve around this point, I was still not someone who was spending much on myself. Once you get into a phase of frugal living, it's not easy to come out of that.

Back to the Future

3 years of residency has changed my character quite a bit. After years of personal trauma & failed relationships, I resorted to turn off certain parts of my personality in order to survive.

You see, you cannot go through some of this shit and expect to remain the same person on the other side. So you close off certain parts of yourself that makes you more vulnerable than you already are.

I don't allow people to get close. This protects me from the threat of eventual abandonment. But it also curses me to loneliness.

I turn my empathy back to the minimum. I care about others more than most. But not enough to take bullshit from them. I don't hesitate to tell people what I think to their faces and I rub a lot of the wrong people the wrong way.

And of course, I'm always angry. Of course I am. My tolerance for any kind of bullshit is 0. I don't have anything left inside for that.

Anhedonia

When you start turning parts of yourself off, sometimes you also lose some parts of yourself that you would have preferred to keep.

Everything I used to enjoy once upon a time, doesn't seem to bring the same kind of joy anymore.

I was the biggest sportsfan there could be in school and college (hence the name of my twitter handle). My knowledge of the top 5 sports of the day would be 2nd to none. But life gets busier. You lose touch with things. Highlights are fine but it doesn't bring the same thrill as live sports.

I don't watch as many movies as I used to for similar reasons. And it doesn't help that I have some niche tastes in film that most people aren't interested in seeing. So I compromise and see the latest popcorn flick. And thus my enjoyment in films in general slowly goes down.

Even my enthusiasm for teaching isn't as great as it once used to be. It's still there but it's tough to keep things going year after year.

Eventually you start to wonder if shutting off parts of yourself has turned you into a zombie.

Bleak

Whenever someone tells me that they're experiencing anhedonia, I'm not really sure what to say.

It's a horrible feeling and there is really no easy solution to get out of it.

Coming back to the beginning of this post, the reason that nothing happens to me even while tipsy is because subconsciously I know what lies deep beneath the surface is pure dark sadness.

And no one wants to see that at a party.


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