Donna’s Reviews > The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows > Status Update

Anechdoche: n. A conversation in which everyone is talking but nobody is listening [...] From anecdote, a short and often amusing account of real-life events + synecdoche, a figure of speech in which a part stands for the whole.

Hanker sore: adj. Finding a person so attractive it actually kinda pisses you off.

symptomania: n. the fantasy that there's some elaborate diagnosis out there that neatly captures the kind of person you are, tying together your many flaws and contradictions into a single theme-which wouldn't necessarily sort out the mess inside your head but would at least let you mark it with a little sign so people know to walk around it.

fool's guilt: n. a pulse of shame you feel even though you've done nothing wrong

liberosis: n. the desire to care less about things; knighthawk: n. a recurring thought that only seems to strike you late at night; nimentia: n. the post-distraction effort to recall the reason you're feeling particularly anxious or excited. (Why was I sad again? Oh right. Why did I remind myself about that.)

onism: the awareness of how little of the world you'll experience [...] in order to be anywhere, you have to be somewhere. You have to confine yourself to just one body, inhabiting only one place at a time. [...] But if someone were to ask you on your death bed what it was like to live here on Earth, perhaps the only honest answer would be: "I don't know. I passed through it once, but I've never really been there."

"zielschmerz: n. the dread of finally pursuing a lifelong dream, which requires you to put your true abilities out there to be tested on the open savannah, no longer protected inside the terrarium of hopes and delusions that you started up in kindergarten and kept sealed as long as you could," Ouch.

"ghough" n. [...] a state of panic that everything good will be taken from you too early, which makes you want to swallow the world before it ends up swallowing you.