anhedonia

​1.

Lately I keep misplacing my appetite for things—not hunger, exactly, but the part of me that yearns and desires. I was surprised to learn there’s a word for the emptiness: anhedonia. They say it comes in two parts: consummatory (can you feel pleasure now?) and anticipatory (can you anticipate pleasure of the future?). They say that the latter is most linked to suicide. I believe them.

On the days I’m doing better, it’ll still find a way to drift in, slipping past me and sitting where the color should be. Sometimes it puts on a mask of dread (what are you going to do with your life, and what’s the point anyway?). Sometimes it whispers small cruelties about the things I love (you still play with LEGOs?). But most often it’s just flatness: someone washed the day with too much light and not enough color.

Sometimes I picture this grand aquarium we call life, where I keep tapping at the glass, waiting for the fish to swim to me. They’re colorful, in theory. They do not care that I’m here.

​2.

When I posted my depression handbook , people reached out and shared their own stories. We had good conversations. Some of us still text.

A couple years ago my friends and I used to joke that the trauma of grinding through Bay Area high school bonded us, and it’s true; our grade was so close we knew one another, even the ones we didn’t get to talk to much. But somehow knowing that others fight their own battles with depression is different, and it doesn’t help. It just feels like such a personal condition, such a personal attack. In that sense, none of us knew what others have really lost; sorry, the loneliness is worse than you thought.

It's my girlfriend who worries when my eyes glaze over at a window that isn’t there. It’s my grandma, who raised me, who I can’t feel excited to sit with. And it’s my LEGO Star Destroyer that I don’t look forward to building anymore.

It’s a private burglary, hollowing out each small joy, and there’s nothing broken, just nothing left.

​3.

Despite it all, I score well. My Whoop fitness tracker awards me with personal records for sleep, recovery, and strain. I placed first amongst my friends last week.

It is, in a way, the fruit of discipline. Through weeks of intentional habit and self compassion, I bargain with the universe: good sleep, sun, creatine, fish oil, protein, meditation—now will I get my old self back?

Politely, I tap through the badges Whoop gives me. My quantified self is impressed. My unquantified self aches, if it even remembers how to.

​4.

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about enjoyment and pleasure. (I know I’m not supposed to overthink.) Will you tell me: what makes something enjoyable?

I used to really enjoy playing the game Stardew Valley, catching the rarest fish and slaying monsters in the caverns. And towards the end of my time playing it, the only complaint I had was the amount of time I spent waiting—for the fish to bite on my line, for my character to traverse across the map. As a solution, I installed a cheat to let me teleport or for the fish to insta-bite. But just like that, the game lost its charm.

A better writer than me could probably tell you why, but for now I'll try not to think too hard.

​5.

Through most of my life, whenever I played basketball there would be something tying the moments together. In high school, a great practice built trust with coaches; a good game at home meant the whole school remembered you. In AAU, every bucket carried that NBA dream.

These days it’s one of the most addicting things for me, but after a summer of playing everyday I feel its viscerally ephemeral state. You can play the best night of your life and it’s just one night, one dot on the calendar with so many before it and so many after it. A few people saw it; most didn’t; tomorrow they’ll all be at work.

Sometimes when visiting SoCal I play with strangers at the Newport Beach 24 Hour Fitness, and for two hours I’m untouchable, I can’t miss. It’s exactly how I pictured it at eight years old, on my brick driveway in the summer, narrating my own legacy games. Can you feel it? It’s coming, it’s here, and then it’s gone. I take my shoes off, step into the parking lot, and it’s gone: unspectacular, undocumented, already dissolving. No one saw it; no one will remember it, not even myself.

Yet the pleasure in the moments holds. Last month in New York I felt it too: in the flood of people, no one cares what you wear or whether you shuffle a deck of cards on the subway. It makes you wonder if that’s how it is our whole life.

“May you live all the days of your life,” someone once said, as if living were distinct from time passing. I think I get it. These days I read it like a dare, and then I lace up anyway.

​6.

In the morning, when the feeling sets in (if you could call it a feeling), I get really scared. A whole day ahead and nothing I want to fill the time with. I know it's coming so I have to keep my brain off, scrolling, watching YouTube, locking myself off in my bedroom. And then I hate myself for it. The self-sabotage stings more because I was a high achiever once; I was ambitious once, do you remember?And I wonder when God asks me, were you Mason Wang? whether I’ll ever be able to say yes.

​7.

Tonight I’m on the curb outside Safeway, eating pre-cut watermelon straight from the container. Honestly, I had a really shitty day, and in an hour I’ll start dreading tomorrow, but shhhh, my watermelon tastes too good. Yesterday, driving home from basketball, I called a friend across the country and we laughed so hard my stomach hurt. Already it feels far away, but maybe I’ll call him again later this week.

Having oscillated between the two for so long, I know that in my world pleasure and its absence are neighbors, sharing a wall thin enough to hear each other breathe. Tonight I press my ear to the paint and listen. Somewhere on the other side, someone is frying onions. They smell like the possibility of dinner. I can’t taste it yet. But the sizzle carries through.

Thank you to Tina Mai  for reading drafts of this.