I am 31 and I have what some would objectively categorize as an ideal life and I have all the boxes checked on the suburban manifest destiny checklist and I have the perfect house and the perfect spouse and the perfect dog and the perfect corporate law career that everyone and I mean EVERYONE assured me would be the pinnacle of achievement and it is and I am very good at it and I consistently exceed expectations and I command respect and I earn a substantial income and I buy very expensive things that I don't really want but I buy them anyway because that is what you do and I don't feel anything anymore and that is the problem. The dissonance started subtly, almost imperceptibly, during the last Thanksgiving and Christmas cycle and it intensified during Easter and now it's Pentecost and I am observing it again and it’s always around the religious holidays and that is the strange thing because I grew up in a very devout household and these were days of genuine joy and conviction and community and now it feels like a performance and I am a primary participant in this performance and I am orchestrating the entire thing from the menu to the guest list to the appropriate religious readings and I am doing it all with an unsettling lack of conviction. My mother called last week and she asked if I had arranged for the church flowers for Pentecost and I said 'of course' and I did arrange them but it felt like a logistical task and not an act of faith and I felt nothing and I just wanted to get it done and move on to the next item on my calendar. I find myself observing my own actions and my own emotions as if from a detached, almost clinical perspective and I analyze my responses and my motivations and my lack of motivation and I categorize the phenomenon as a peculiar form of anhedonia, specifically anhedonia localized to spiritual or communal experiences. I note the specific physiological responses: a slight increase in heart rate during the blessing, a forced smile during the family prayer, a carefully modulated tone of voice when discussing scripture, and it’s all a construct and it’s all meticulously maintained but the internal experience is flatlined and I feel nothing but a vague sense of emptiness and a faint intellectual curiosity about why I feel nothing. My husband asked me during Easter dinner if I was feeling unwell and I said 'just a little tired from work' and he accepted it and I accepted it and we both moved on. I drive my luxury SUV through the perfectly manicured streets of our affluent suburb and I see the identical houses and the identical families and the identical aspirations and I think about the next holiday and the next performance and the next meticulously constructed facade and I wonder if anyone else feels this profound internal void or if it’s just me and my hyper-analytical brain and my high-achieving self and my meticulously curated life and I wonder if I am just defective or if this is the normal endpoint for people like me and I also wonder what the hell I am supposed to do about it because I have everything and I have nothing and it’s just so incredibly absurd and honestly, sometimes, I just have to laugh.