[SnappingRope]

Before I start, please don't reply with reassurance or kind words - they don't work on me. Whatever brain process makes a normal person feel better when someone offers kind words is missing for me. Not looking for reassurance. Looking to see If anyone experiences the same kinds of things as me. Need to figure out what's wrong as soon as possible - can't go on much longer.

...

I can't seem to consciously think and feel positive emotions at the same time. For example, if I read the lyrics to a song I can't 'feel' the music. If I'm playing guitar and I feel the music I instantly forget the next chord, no matter how many times I've played it before. I don't know the words to a single song no matter how much I like it - if I like it I'll be feeling the music, in which case the words become just sounds without semantic meaning. If I'm around another person and they tell me something sad, like their Grandmother died, I won't be able to say anything at all, because I'll be feeling sad. Conversely, if I say something sad to someone else and they say something reassuring I feel as if their words are completely disingenuous because for me to feel the emotion means to be incapable of thought, and if they can speak to me it means they aren't feeling the emotion.

This lack of emotion/thought integration impacts what memories I can intentionally retrieve. If brain regions aren't in communication in a given moment they can't be wired together for later retrieval. My memories are of two fairly distinct kinds: factual without any emotional content; not memories at all but enveloping realities I'm transported to entirely, in which case I'm not recalling them but living through a present tense reality that completely replaces actual reality. The second kind only happens with negative memories, and I feel emotion in those. But I never recall pleasant emotions at all.

If someone asked me to think of a fond memory I don't have any. My only fond memories are of times when things went bad and it was difficult to get through, experiences where I had to strain to survive - my best memory is when I nearly drowned in a flooded river and had to strain with every fibre of my being to survive. I figure these kinds of memories are infused with endorphins, and are a different kind of happy memory than the kind other people seem to be able to retain.

Since I have no happy memories I neither have any capacity to imagine any kind of happy future - without happy memories there are no materials from which to create a happy future. If I try to imagine a positive future it's as if my brain is just missing a crucial cog and nothing happens. I just go blank. I can't remember ever having imagined something positive for myself. Consequently I don't have any desires - there's nothing I want. My parents literally badgered me asking for what I want for Christmas when I was young - I always just said 'nothing'. From within the moment, if I'm engaged in something, I can desire something useful to that moment, but it's only functional/practical. I've never decorated anything at all, never so much as hung a poster on a wall.

Since I have no positive memory, I have no sense of self. The self is a set of preferences - what one does/doesn't like and how they prefer to attain/avoid what they like/dislike. We can choose our preferences via two routes: by desire, or by repulsion. If there were a pile of marbles before you and someone said 'pick one', you could either look and see the one you think looks nicest, or you could look at each for what you dislike and exclude marbles one by one until there is only one left. Choosing by desire is fast, automatically excluding all alternatives in one go. Choosing by exclusion is slow. If I don't remember happy things I never remember those choices I make via desire, and my character therefore grows extremely slowly because it instead selects preferences by using negative emotion to exclude possibilities one by one.

I have no motivation that lasts beyond the moment. Without positive emotion being attached to memory there is nothing encouraging motivation to persist when the object isn't directly focussed on. I can spontaneously become motivated by a thing before me, but as soon as I look away from it for any reason that motivation is gone. For that reason I've never had a routine of any kind. Not even 'get up, shower, shave...'.

Since I have no memory for positive emotion all my past is filled only with negative emotion. Therefore everything inside me is somewhat repulsive because there is at least some negativity in every moment, and if you take away the positive that's all you're left with.

For this reason I seek novelty, always. However, I've gotten to the point where there is nothing truly novel left in all the world. Everything is grey. There's nothing fresh and new. If I won a million dollars there is still nothing I'd want to see or do.

I also don't seem to remember bodily movements very well, or something... Haven't figured this out yet. Things I have to do all the time don't seem to get imprinted into muscle memory in a way where I don't need to put in conscious effort to do the thing. Instead everything stays as difficult to do as the first time I tried to do it. Doing dishes, for instance - it aught to have gotten to the point where this was no great hardship, but instead, after years of struggling, I just buy paper plates and disposable knives/forks. It's wasteful, but the effort of even the easiest of things is beyond me. At the foot of every molehill my mind beholds a mountain.

There is an exhausting and heavy gravity always pulling my mind to stillness. I'm losing everything to that tired pull. It takes effort to care when your mind is always tired, and at some point you just have to decide you don't care anymore. Then you lose part of yourself as you give up. I'm down to the last few things. Years ago I gave up caring what I looked like, whether I washed, whether I had clean clothes... Money, career, relationships... Haven't combed my hair in more than a decade. All I have left is love for my family, and I'm struggling to keep even that against the tiredness. If I lose it I may as well give not exist. I wouldn't be me anymore anyway.

I can't go on much longer. Don't really want to die, but really need a holiday from existence. If I lose my family there won't be anything left to keep me alive and I'll be happy to suicide. That's the only way I see this ending to be honest. This is it for me - last ditch attempt. What I'm hoping to gain from this post is for someone to say 'I have those symptoms too, and it means such and such is wrong, and here's how to fix it'.

Thanks for reading.

[Yaowen]

I have experienced something similar, but you have expressed it much better than I ever could. What you wrote about the guitar happened to me with the piano. At the time I was on Celexa. My doc added a med called Buspirone and I haven't had that experience since. I am glad because that set of experiences was so brutal, so draining, so agonizing for me. Just no words to describe it.

[SnappingRope]

Thanks for your reply. It might be informative that this happened to you due to a medication. Do you mind if I ask you more about it? Maybe you could pm me if you're not comfortable saying on here?

The more you can tell me about this period/incident, and about what led up to it, the better it will potentially help me figure out what's wrong with me.

I've been like this my whole life - don't even know what it's like to be normal, so I have no baseline for comparison. Again, thanks for your reply.