I went to a spa today. I love spas, especially saunas, but I have never been to this one before, which is why it was kind of a big deal for me. My social anxiety is always there, but especially hard in a new environment and going all on my own did not help. But that actually was not the hard part because at least no one bats an eye in a spa if I don’t talk to anyone. The hard part is something I can only describe as the feeling of defeat. Today I did something that is hard for me, something I wanted to do for quite some time and when I did, I enjoyed it. But now that I am at home, it doesn’t feel like a success. It feels like a defeat, it feels as if I somehow lost, was not good enough at enjoying myself. Sure, it was not as fun as it would have been with a friend, sure, I only did three rounds in the sauna instead of the four I was planning on but still, there is no good reason why I feel this way and yet I do.
This feeling is one of the things you don’t expect from depression. It does not really show up in any medical textbook or anything like that, at least not in a way that makes me feel like it is described accurately. Depression makes it difficult to enjoy things and this is true in my case too. Healthy me would have had a lot more fun. But that is not the problem, I did have fun. Maybe not everyone with depression has this feeling, maybe it isn’t even my depression but another issue. All I know is it sucks. But at least I am aware of it. There were times when this feeling made me do stupid things, like drink, make impulse purchases or do other things that would make me happy temporarily, just so that I could look back at my day in the evening and think “Yes, good one”. Of course acting this way catches up with you eventually, one way or another. Now I know that it is best to ignore this nagging feeling and simply try to have a good evening. Even when it feels like I lost the battle of the day.
The Metaphorical of Delphi 