Hal's core anhedonia: empty inside, no real emotion since tiny, and lonely

pivotal · UNDATED, ~YDAU

• When: UNDATED (~YDAU present; authorial-essayistic aside on Hal's interior, basis: framed against the Kate Gompert depression essay)
• What: The defining statement of Hal's interior. Hal is sure JOI's suicide wasn't standard U.S. anhedonia (though he has no idea yet of the real reason). Hal himself "hasn't had a bona fide intensity-of-interior-life-type emotion since he was tiny," treats joie/value as variables in equations he can manipulate to convince everyone but himself that he's "in there," and is "far more robotic than John Wayne." A central rift with Avril: she believes she knows him inside and out as an internally worthy human being, when "inside Hal there's pretty much nothing at all, he knows" — she hears her own echoes in him and mistakes them for him. The one thing Hal feels to the limit lately is loneliness. He privately theorizes that hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is fear of being really human, and that he despises the hideous infantile internal self he's really lonely for. (Framed distinct from Gompert's "It"/psychotic depression: Hal's numb emptiness "isn't the worst kind of depression," and he "isn't old enough yet to know" this.)