Anhedonia

an⋅he⋅do⋅ni⋅a  /ˌænhiˈdoʊniə/
–noun Psychology. Lack of pleasure or of the capacity to experience it.

I'm finding it hard to write lately.

Used to be I could sit down at a computer and just let the words flow out. Usually once they started, they wouldn't stop. I had a lot going on in my head-- story plots, rants, whinings, little bits of fancy that I wanted to document in case they ever came in handy later on.

I wrote because I find it hard to talk to people, and if the words didn't come out one way, they'd have to come out another or I'd explode.

Now, though. Now I'm hard-pressed even to come up with a Tweet. 140 characters and I can't even manage that. It's like the numbness that steals over my brain when confronted with social interaction has taken to stealing everything else as well.

What's funny is this: when I was first diagnosed with depression, all I did was write. I was miserable, so I bled the pain onto paper. I wrote hundreds of stories and poems and drabbles, mostly pretty angsty and whiny, sure, but it was a means of coping, and a healthy one at that.

Then I went on antidepressants, and the flood instantly dried up into a trickle. I could still write my laundry-list journal entries, but nothing creative came out. I don't know if I even had many ideas anymore. The creative center of my brain (along with other key areas) felt wrapped in cotton wool, dull, mute, foggy. This lasted for roughly three years, and I always hated Paxil for robbing me of that time.

Then I weaned myself off the drugs. And slowly...slowly...slowly it came back. I wrote my first novel that year. I wrote two more in the two years after that. It was funny at first. Amazing! I can be happy AND creative! It's not like that anymore. I'm not sad right now, and I'm not happy. I just am.

The two journal entries I've written so far have taken days of thought and mustering of energies. I've had to browbeat myself into just sitting down and doing something. I don't know why this is, but I have to get back to the way I was.

I still have things to say-- they just aren't coming yet.