The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Such is the blessing and the curse of language. Words are so effective at simplifying reality that it’s easy to lose track of how much detail is being left out.

Strange that no matter how predictable your life is, nobody in history has ever lived it before.

Just imagine how much courage it must take, to set a guitar case down on the cobblestones and make that first move, hoping it’ll resonate with someone passing by. To keep pouring your heart into something, even if it falls on deaf ears. Reaching out in the face of indifference, just trying to give people permission to care. Indifference is easy. It

énouement n. the bittersweetness of having arrived here in the future, finally learning the answers to how things turned out but being unable to tell your past self.

Sometimes you have no idea what to think about yourself, feeling somehow better than everybody but not good enough for anybody.

justing n. the habit of telling yourself that just one tweak could solve all of your problems—if

And when she’s alone, she’s someone else entirely, a person you’ll never get a chance to meet.

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,

You see yourself as you are, with your failures just as clear as your successes. But you see most other people on their terms—only from the side they want you to see, like a statue on a high pedestal, stoic and confident. At first glance, they’ve got everything figured out, with every feature set in stone, exactly as they had intended. They appear