Horror at suddenly remembering something stupid you said a decade ago
Hungry because you’ve been eating nonstop all day and you’ve finally gone from painfully full to just regular full and that’s what feels like hunger now
Sexual resentment
Seasonal fear of death (autumn)
A picture of a happy dog
Sexually beleaguered
Bjork
Emails
So tired you feel like your entire body is shimmering in and out of space-time
“I’ll try to make it”
Right turn on red without stopping
Golden Girls
When an article says “Continued on page 64″ but then you just turned the next page and forgot about it and then you find it again at the back of the magazine
No
Prince
Hand down your pants
The anger specific to reading Joyce Carol Oates’ Twitter feed
Bread and crying
Too high up in a building
Spending too much money online but not returning anything
Sneaking an unopened roll of fancy toilet paper into your purse in the bathroom of a nice restaurant and taking it home with you
“Happy Tuesday”
Sidewalk loneliness
A birthday party for the ghost of a worm and the worm ghost is wearing a tiny birthday hat and saying “thanks for coming” in his tiny worm ghost voice
Late for something
Car exhaustion
Backyard memories
Sweater weather
A little red-headed kid pulling a wagon filled with straw and also his kid brother behind him, but ruined
Other people’s essays about their dying parents
Talking about being inside of a Target with other strangers who like being inside of a Target online while you’re all at work instead of at Target
That’s it
Tags: feelings, indices, relationships
May I add: the painful and horrible relating to each and every item on a list of items online
“The sudder of recognition tag on theToast”
I want to feel “Prince” but I often feel more “sexual resentment.” Maybe it’s a seasonal thing. Maybe I should move to Minneapolis, or wear more purple. Or vitamin P supplements?
I am SO glad to have the term sexual resentment pop up today, because I definitely needed a word for what I was feeling last night when I angrily reactivated my Okcupid account because watching a romantic moment between Ross and Rachel gave me a pang of longing.
Or wear leggings: http://millihelen.jezebel.com/fashion-what-ifs-16…
Have you tried a swim in Lake Minnetonka?
True story: My cousin’s boat broke down and they landed on the shores of his lake property on Minnetonka and his security guard wouldn’t let them use the phone and told them to leave. To be fair, I wouldn’t have let them use my phone either. Also fun fact: sometimes Prince goes grocery shopping at Byerly’s in Chanhassen in a purple cloak.
Why am I so sad about this worm. It’s too early to be crying about a worm ghost. I would like an apology.
Also, could someone fill me in on why Joyce Carol Oates is problematic/why reading her Twitter would make me angry?
Here’s a Gawker summary of some of the worst of it. She’s just… awful. http://gawker.com/an-open-letter-to-joyce-carol-o…
http://jezebel.com/please-stop-tweeting-joyce-car…
the worm ghost
:((((((
We could have a worm ghost funeral….but not so much a funeral as a celebration of the worm ghost’s life?
Now I’m picturing the ghost of Lowly Worm from the Richard Scarry books.
When I was small, he was the check on my behaviour (Aka my grandmother doing a funny voice) who would phone me and tell me off when I was naughty and pass info on to Santa about my behaviour in the runup to Christmas.
I pictured the exact same thing. With his little boot…
I’m picturing the ghost worm from The Little Worm Book, which I need somebody else to have read.
Noooooooo poor Lowly.
The worm ghost party seems like something that should happen on Adventure Time.
Realising you are doomed to unemployment, resulting in being awake at 4 am.
Hungry because you’ve been eating nonstop all day and you’ve finally gone from painfully full to just regular full and that’s what feels like hunger now
No
Bread and crying
Late for something
Car exhaustion
That is my entire life. I’m not sure how to feel about that.
Late for something is pretty much my only emotion. I guess there’s a subtype called I bet there’s somewhere I have to be that I totally forgot about and I’m probably already late.
Also I have strong memories of a comment thread on the Hairpin about lateness and it was full of people who were like “people are late just because they want to be rude to me, I swear! If you show up late we’re not friends!” And it was maybe the most intense emotional reaction I’ve ever had to an internet comment section because THIS IS MY LIFE, YOU DON’T UNDERSTAAAAND MY FEELINGS
oh my god, I remember this, and yes, a thousand times yes
Oh my god I remember that thread! I can’t remember if I commented or just typed up a response, then deleted it and curled up in a ball of shame and guilt.
IT’S NOTHING PERSONAL I’M JUST PATHOLOGICALLY BAD AT HUMAN FUNCTIONING
If I’m on-time or early, it’s a sign that I am VERY ANXIOUS so REALLY being late all the time is a demonstration of trust and affection!
this
I
oh
I
this
Too high up in a building
This is me almost always. Too high up = not actually underground.
You need to live in my basement suite! They dug down to give the place nine-foot ceilings, and even when I’m nowhere near a window, it always feels like I’m hiding deep in the earth. (Before this, we lived in the top of an apartment building, and I felt Too High Up In A Building for the whole year.)
My daughter and I had girls weekend at a swank hotel in Boston last weekend, and it was awesome except we were on the 27th floor of the hotel. So of course I was traumatized every time either of us got near the window, and lulled myself to sleep with images of me shepherding her down 27 dark, smoky flights of stairs in a fire.
There’s also “caffeine fear” and “when did I last brush my teeth/have I ever taken a shower”
We are the same person.
No, that’s the same as “bread and crying”
I think you forgot – Getting home, settling in, and then realizing you have to go out again.
AKA:
“The Homebody’s Lament” or “Why Did We Buy Those Tickets to That Thing?” or “Why Do People Even HAVE Parties?”
Why DO people even have parties. Unless the party is for consumption of food. Those I understand.
And lastly WHY do people even have parties? And parties on a Sunday night? Oh, dear lord no.
I’d take either of those over “How Did I Forget I’m Out Of Toilet Paper” or “Shit, There’s No More Cat Food,” though.
“Shit, There’s No More Cat Food,” <— This is feelings 1-4 for me
PBR time! Post-Bra Relaxation
Noooooo just thinking about that feeling is making me want to huddle under a blanket and never move.
Hand down your pants
Your own, or someone else’s?
I sort of confused that with handing in your pants and i wondered who i was meant to give my pants to?
<small>signs i need more hands down my pants</small>
I first read it as hand down your favorite pants to the next kid in line, you’re too big for them now! A definite result of having grown up dressed only in hand-me-down clothes.
It can be two things.
Current feeling I am having: “Did this motherfucker just refer to cooking as poiesis in his novel, this shit is why I left academia.”
Please, please, which novel? I don’t want to read it by accident.
10:04 by Ben Lerner. There might be something smart going on here under the smarm, but I’m not sure yet.
Based on the two pages I just read on the internet, the author doesn’t seem to want you to forget that he is smart, at least.
But my all those cultural/class markers the narrator jams together on the first page and a half! You’d almost mistake it all for a character.
Yep. I’m waiting to see if the wider novel is actually commentary on this kind of thinking and writing. It does some interesting things with blending fiction and reality and ruminating on possible futures. I just don’t think you need a narrator who refers to crying as a “lacrimal event” to get your point across…
This seems fair. But also thinking I may refer to my next crying episode as a lacrimal event. And then console myself with a blended palliative intoxicant.
Blended palliative intoxicants: the cause of and solution to all of this globular internetwork of personal and architectural arterial meaning’s problems.
Did that “lacrimal event” happen to someone with violet eyes and perfect teeth and hair? By which I mean, is this a novel that was adapted from Mary-Sue Harry Potter fanfiction?
An animal using you as a pillow.
<3 <3 <3 <3
::falls to earth, keens::
oh noooooo
Ruthie! Curled up between you and your laptop. You didn’t think you could do anything at all but cuddle her, did you?
& also: cat sighs
Reading this list, on a computer that is in safe mode, and having to go back to bed, and no matter how tightly you shut the curtains, unforgiving winter light is forcing itself off the snow and through your window.
What do you call the particular variation on sidewalk loneliness where you realize you’ve just stopped walking, and you don’t really feel motivated to start again because the effort required to move your legs outweighs the benefits of literally anywhere you could go right now?
Oh right, depression
Literally wrote about that in a piece on Seasonal Affective Disorder, coming soon. Glad to know it’s semi-universal
oof
I get the urge to just lie down on the ground and not move. So far I have not given into it (when outside; I have done this on the floor of my home plenty of times), but it will happen one day.
One of the many bittersweet facets of being a smoker is that I when I feel this way I can sit down on the curb to have a smoke instead of making myself go home.
In a bit of a rough patch a couple months ago I was walking down the street, stopped for no reason, and then just thought “this is what animals in learned helplessness experiments feel like.” And that’s when I decided I should probably talk to someone.
That’s why I quit my delivery job. The effort required to brake at stoplights was becoming a chore, and it was starting to scare me.
This Winter Will Never End (related to Bread and Crying)
Mall Fever (related to Car Exhaustion, but with more disorientation, but with just as many purchases of ill-advised snacks)
A Small Human or Pet Fell Asleep On Me
Also related to Winter Will Never End and Bread and Crying: Netflix Headache
Mall Fever: see also Shop Blindness
“A Pet Fell Asleep On Me” and “Play Video Games Until You Forget The Rest of the World” are my only current antidotes to WHY IS IT WINTER.
Which means the latter has diluted much that is good about the former, and now I feel a small burst of resentment towards a pet falling asleep on my body, since clearly it means I’m still inside AND IT IS STILL WINTER.
I get There Is Not Enough Snow Here instead. Big crying fits of it, in fact.
Waking up in the morning on the day you’re going to Disney World
Going back to the grocery store for a third time in a day, and this time there is a bird in here
Reading through the employee manual at your new student job and finding the chapter heading “What to do in case of bats.”
What DOES one do in case of bats?
Curl into a ball and sob, if one is me and the bats are in the walls. (Then I move to somewhere bat-free.)
I need this to be a novel that I can read. Someone get on that, please.
once saw a squirrel running on top of boxes at Food Lion
Horror at suddenly remembering something stupid you said a decade ago
Oh hey welcome to my brain 24/7, it has a whooole index of every stupid thing I have said or done in the last 26 years that plays over in a loop.
It was capped at dumb things I said a decade ago until I started AGING past the point where I could ignore anything I did ten years ago. Now my past embarrassments expand unceasingly.
The first thing I remember that I am still embarrassed about was in 2nd grade, so this has haunted my adulthood.
Seriously, on my way to school this morning (like, just before reading this) I was definitely replaying several stupid things I’d said last year.
You’re not alone, be assured. When I was once discussing with my therapist that I thought people perceived me as callous, she asked for an example and I gave her the one that was tormenting me that week: I’d accidentally said something mean to a friend in junior high. My therapist, of course, pointed out that the fact that I had to reach back that far invalidated my fear. I couldn’t seem to explain to her that, honey, you make it sound like this hasn’t happened in the thirty years since then, instead of about once a month like clockwork.
this is making me feel all the feels
Wine, whiskey, or vodka: Today’s Difficult Choices
Gin. The answer is gin.
Mulled wine that you can supplement with whiskey or vodka!
Related to “Other people’s essays about their dying parents”: other people’s essays about recently deceased pets.
aka “Attempting not to cry in public”
With a big difference being that I will totally read someone’s essay about a dying parent, and I will feel very sad, but I will read it.
And I will never ever read a thing I know to heavily feature pet death.
I need to go kiss my cats now.
Same. Relieved to know I am not alone. This article is about a doggy? I’m interested. Wait, is the doggy gonna die? Nope. Not gonna click. No way.
Cat smooch update: Trillian smells like cat, Twoflower smells like SPICES
why does Twoflower smell like spices
I am just waiting for veterinary science to work out companion animal immortality because if anyone deserves immortality, it’s cats and dogs and bunnies and lizards and weirdo birds who chew on your favorite books of poetry, you know?
My cat occasionally smells like snickerdoodles (which I have baked exactly once in the year or so I have had the cat), coconut (which means she’s been sleeping on the PJs I put on after slathering myself in Body Shop coconut body cream), and rain (she is an indoor cat). I can’t figure any of this out.
My cat, Tessie, smells like kitten (sometimes with the faint aura of Kitten Fart). My roommate’s cat smells like STOP TOUCHING ME WITHOUT MY INITIATION HORRIBLE HUMAN.
“do I actually want this thing I’ve worked for for x-number of years, or do I actually just want ice cream and to forget it ever happened”
This is my exact feeling about the year 2015.
(Also I originally typed 2016 i already forgot what year we are in.)
I’m applying to grad schools right now. I’ve cried a lot. A LOT.
Oh hey, did you go to grad school too?
Ice cream all around, please.
I’m applying. 🙁 why.
Oh crap, I don’t mean to infect you with bitterness if you’re applying! I just got a PhD that turned out not to be what I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing, and now and again I think of what I could be doing right now if I’d, like, gotten a job when I was 21 instead of signing up to read books by dead guys forever.
Epidemiology sounds like it might have much more bearing on, you know, things, and that’s a satisfying thing to know.
No, no, it’s okay. 🙂 I am largely just very, very tired of struggling through classes I don’t enjoy. I’m having to retake physics for my degree and it’s just miserable. I think I’ll like public health much more (I’m applying for an MPH).
also known as– everytime im reminded i went to law school
I experience “every time I’m reminded that I spent time and money on an expensive post-college degree only to realize that I want to do something completely different now.”
Get rid of your precocious college students who don’t understand the point of terminal grad degrees, they are disgusting.
I’ve spent all this time trying to be a microbiologist only to realize I actually want to be an epidemiologist.
But that’s still valuable experience, though – I mean, you get how the organisms you might be tracking actually work, right? Assuming you’d be doing contagion stuff, not, say, epidemiology of environmental asthma or something…
(Or I could shut up. But surely there’s a small silver lining there?
Yeah! I don’t regret my time chasing microbiology. I went into it because I was into infectious diseases, so it wasn’t a waste at all. I was just a little confused about the specifics apparently.
“I’ll try to make it”
Related: Putting down phone, briefly considering getting off sofa, “I’m totally not going to that fucking thing.”
“You said you would meet me
If I’m half way interested
I’ll be upset if you waited
Frankly stunned if I made it
I insist you go ahead”
—Sloan, “Try to Make It”
Also, “I might could go to the thing”.
Translation: I’ll look at the calendar the morning of, weigh the benefits of being social, choose the no-bra-sweatpants outfit for the day.
You have a deadline really soon, but are too paralysed with panic, self-loathing and misery to want to do anything to allow yourself to meet it. (This is the only feeling I have right now.)
^ah. Writing my thesis right now, and this is so real. Anxiety is such a dickish little toddler of a feeling, always monopolizing your attention when you need to get shit done.
OMG thesis panic. My favorite part of having my terminal degree is never feeling this way so intensely.
Related to thesis panic: Adviser Anxiety.
Yes and yes. I needed to read this right now – feel like everyone else in my department is great at just GETTING THINGS DONE while I’m here with a pile of notes that I haven’t picked up in two hours.
Now, to get shit done! (probably)
I got the little “Error! You have Already Voted” in my swiftness to like this ALL THE TIMES. 😛
Sometimes I wonder why journalism is the writing I chose, w/my hatred of deadlines, until I remember my short attention span, & lack of patience with shutting myself up in a room, by myself, and typing out the Next American Classic.
YESSSSS. I’m applying for a major fellowship for which I have to lay bare my entire life story and far-reaching professional goals, and I totally don’t deserve it so am doing the only rational thing – self-sabotaging and hiding under the covers.
Applying to graduate schools here. The personal statement is the easy part! The personal statement is the part that makes it feel like my bone marrow is magnetized to my floorboards and I have to lay here for the foreseeable future, just maybe make me some toast and nudge it toward my mouth and spritz me with water whenever you’re going to do the plants.
unngghhhhhhhhhhhhh
That’s been this month at work! Yeeeeeyyyyyyy
I hope that the ‘Indices’ tab portends a Borges Tribute series of myriad taxonomies, catalogs and classifications.
myriad taxonomies, catalogs, classifications, soups, hats, and “other”.
Panic because it’s getting late and I haven’t decided what to watch on Netflix.
Yes! I feel this often.
Related: panic because you are halfway done with your dinner and you haven’t decided what to watch on netflix while you eat so that you finish both on time.
Having to call people on the phone. ON THE PHONE. This might be a subset of “bread and crying”.
Ohhh that is a special kind of tummy-doom feeling. I can relate.
Twice yesterday. 🙁
Having to call people who are angry about something you are responsible for but cannot control on the phone. This is the only time I ever really hate my job.
Oh. That is awful.
I GET THIS ALL THE TIME except it’s people calling me, and I brought it up with my boss recently and her reaction was basically ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
We have a complaints line, which is frequently busy, and when people hit voicemail on the complaints line they call me, because I’m the only number on the Contact Us page that’s not a 1-800 so they figure they’ll get a live human being. They get really pissy when I tell them that I’m the librarian and there’s nothing I can do about their problem and since I work for the government there’s a lot of “MY TAX DOLLARS PAY YOUR SALARYYYYYYY” to boot.
I am so sorry.
Related: “Voicemail from parent.”
Woooooooooorst.
The special angst of having to call a bunch people to do a Thing and hoping that you’ll get their voicemail.
This is my job sometimes, and I’d much rather hide in a corner.
That is the worst.
I’m sorry but these need to be numbered in order of importance/danger to be of any use to me
how can I pick my favorite if I have to count to reshare the list with a header of “this. especially #7.”
this is the internet you can’t just not number lists
is Buzzfeed our only bastion of peer review left
The horrible whiplash of waking up in the middle of the night and, within the span of two seconds, going from “I am safe and warm burrowed under the duvet next to the person I love” to “he is either going to die before me or have to watch me die and I don’t know which is worse, maybe one or both of us is riddled with secret malignant tumours already“
I was up in the middle of the night last night having a good long think about how even though my grandmother was a wonderful person with many friends and a family that loved her she still spent the last ten years of her life essentially alone in that big old house, and if that can happen to her it will happen to us all.
WHY BRAIN WHY
The horrible whiplash of feeling comforted that other people have the same intrusive anxieties that you do, then starting to feel the same anxieties because reading it reminded you of them
A thumbs-up is probably not the right response to this, but I did it anyway.
I am absolutely going to remember this whenever I start to feel sorry for myself about being single, so thanks.
That thought has literally made me think “maybe we should just break up now and spare ourselves the agony”.
UGH LOVE Y SO MEAN?
Bad things are going to happen and I can’t control or stop it in any way aaauuuuugh.
I have a correction! “Late for something” is not a distinct feeling; it is identical to “Too high up in a building”.
However, “Way, way, WAY too early for something” is a heretofore unindexed feeling.
(And no, I DON’T want to get in another argument about how it’s really just “Happy Tuesday” in a different context. They’re separate feelings and you know it!)
Ugh, way too early for things. My fear of the late for something feeling drives me into the way too early feeling which is probably even worse. One day I will figure out this magical thing called being reasonably on time.
The thing about being too early is, there are a lot of incidental circumstances that could cause someone to be late. It’s not automatically your fault, and people will understand. And anyway, the very nature of lateness leaves you with little time to dwell on it once you’re there.
Being way too early, however, is almost exclusively your fault and your fault alone. Either you misunderstood the target entirely, are pitiably poor at estimating travel delays, or Just Cared Too Much and overthought it. And then you are left alone at your destination to feel SHAME, for a built-in amount of time equal to how much ya done bungled it up. It’s one of my least favorite feelings in the world.
I also experience “feel weird level of shame about generally leaving way too early for everything, attempt to combat this and end up missing my train as a result”
Waiting Alone In Your Car For Someone Else To Show Up So You’re Not The First One There
yes this. mitigated by having books to read on my phone.
Way Too Early is only okay if you can stop at a coffee place or somewhere similar that is fairly close to your real destination.
Otherwise UGH, because you have to not just sit there and be obviously Way Too Early, but there’s usually nothing to dooooo.
If I could feel Golden Girls for the rest of my life, that would pretty much be the best of all possible worlds.
*update* the idea that only certain parts of the tongue are sensitive to sweater weather, Golden Girls and Bjork is a persistent myth we need to stop teaching our children. modern research shows that while detection of car exhaustion may be heightened on the tip we by and large taste all of our feelings with the entirety of the tongue with roughly equal acuity.
BJÖRK
I think I feel Bjork a lot of the time. It’s pretty much how I deal with the modern world.
Gesundheit
Overdue library books you haven’t read yet
On the flip side: having had an old, not terribly popular book on hold for months and it still hasn’t arrived yet and your account says you’re #8 in line for it. Who are all these other people suddenly dying to read it and why are they taking so long?
Related: Netflix DVDs that have sat unwatched for over a month that you decide to just send back so you get something new.
Looking at things you cannot afford online
yeeeeeeeep
Having been so excited about the release of a new album or TV show or movie that it’s impossible to tell whether it’s not as good as you’d hoped or you just hyped it up so much that it could never have lived up to your expectations
Trying to figure out how this list is indexed and feelings of inadequacy because you can’t.
Talking about being inside of a Target with other strangers who like being inside of a Target online while you’re all at work instead of at Target
this is me, this is me 100% of the time I feel no other feelings I know they’re all just evil capitalist bullshit in different colors but I cannot explain my love for Target
(I think it may have something to do with the Pizza Hut inside)
“Horror at suddenly remembering something stupid you said a decade ago”
And its close relative, churning discontent at your response to something stupid someone said to you a decade ago (and obsessive rehashing of better alternatives).
And when both parties to the conversation were stupid, you get a very magical mixture of the two.
Filling out your annual performance review.
And knowing you have to do it even though no one will ever look at this ridiculously long document you just produced to their specifications.
I hate “Happy Tuesday” with a violent, flaming passion. If you want to “Happy-” me anything, it should be “Happy Deadlines Are Postponed” or “Happy There Are Puppies In The Breakroom” or “Happy Promotion!”
I second the vote of: “Waaaayyy too Early for This” & would like to suggest: “Desk Lethargy”
My (very sweet) coworker says “Happy Friday Eve” on Thursdays, and ugh.
“Desk Lethargy”
yes.
also, “late-afternoon inability to do anything other than surf the internet while the close-of-business deadline for things you were supposed to get done today draws steadily nearer and nearer” as a combination of desk lethargy & late for something.
^^ALL OF THAT. If I need something important done by cob, it has to be 50% done at 10 am, or might as well kiss that sucker goodbye.
…man, adulthood. way to combine my least favorite feelings. “Late for something” & “encroaching paralysis.”
At first I thought you said “Dark Lethargy,” which is a big chunk of “Seasonal fear of death (autumn)” for me.
“So tired you feel like your entire body is shimmering in and out of space-time”
This place understands me, truly.
This is 95% of my life now.
if you accompany it with “An entire boat of espresso” you get “college undergrad”
If you then add whiskey, you get grad school.
The obscure joy I get when I buy a new pair of dark jeans and they have that delightful matchstick smell because they were dyed with sulphur.
I’m so glad other people like matchstick smell, though.
Airport hugs. Both kinds.
Getting ready to go to the gym, packing your gym bag, having your pre-gym snack, but then you just stay in instead cause you’re already exhausted from all the planning
Currently reading this inside a target.
The mix of studiousness and joy when you smell old books
The hesitant, admiring connection when someone who you didn’t know had a sense of humor says something unexpectedly funny
Playing a game you haven’t played since childhood and becoming a slightly different, less anxious, more happy person while you play
The realization that when the browser crashed all your tabs didn’t save
A quiet room withstanding a thunderstorm outside
Walking into a cool room on a hot day and feeling strangely ten pounds lighter
Thinking nobody sees you and then learning someone does
Peeling the price sticker off a new book
Smiling at someone carrying a bouquet of flowers because you know they bought them for their girlfriend and you like that
You are awesome at this game.
It is still dark outside.
The foresight to know that you will scald the roof of your mouth on that pizza but the lack of willpower to wait until it cools.
Delaying writing a cover letter for a job you would love, to the point where the job gets taken, then being mad at the company for filling the position.
Waking up 20 minutes before your alarm and not going back to sleep because you’re counting down the minutes until you have to get up.
Skipping to the end of a voicemail so you can delete it without listening to it.
that alarm anxiety is the bane of my existence
Literally Everything About Job-Hunting
I am always doing that with pizza. And my alarm. Sigh.
As Jeffrey Eugenides so eloquently put it in Middlesex: “Emotions, in my experience, aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in “sadness,” “joy,” or “regret.” Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, “the happiness that attends disaster.” Or: “the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy.” I’d like to show how “intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members” connects with “the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.” I’d like to have a word for “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants” as well as for “the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.”
The sense of both panic and inevitability that comes with realizing you have a certification exam in two days, in a subject you haven’t studied formally in twelve years.
I’m there.
Holding someone else’s baby, and the weird illusion it gives you that you want a baby even though you really don’t.
Waiting for a text from a friend. Getting annoyed. Finding out friend had a very good reason for not texting back that day.
Feeling guilty for getting annoyed with friend, then being annoyed by the feeling of guilt itself.
Texting someone something you think is witty/interesting/cool, only to regret it immediately after you hit “send” and spend the next hour until they respond wondering if they think you’re a goofball.
Ugh this is how I feel about every comment I almost/don’t/do post on the Toast.
Also the crickets that receive all my tweets that I think are hilarious. Because I tweet in manic bouts then just lurk for, like, ten months. Why aren’t you all just hanging out there, tenterhooked, for my bi-annual tweet bout?
Forty-five minutes before you get to leave on whatever is the last day of your workweek
When your parents visit, and then they leave.
When you visit your parents, and then you leave.
“Landslide”
Feeling sorry for Mick Jagger
Headache denial
Finishing a book and wanting to read another book exactly like it, and then realizing that such a book does not exist.
Facebook
“Landslide”!
That book thing! I hate that. I always end up buying another book by the same author and not finishing it because it’s not quite what I wanted, which was to have not already read the other book I loved.
FINISHING A BOOK AND WANTING ANOTHER LIKE IT AND REALIZING IT DOESN’T EXIST
this is the most acute sense of loss there is
Facebook needs to be subdivided into a couple of additional feelings:
-when you see pictures of people in places you’ve dreamed about, and they are glossing over key destination points
-the unattractiveness of an ex or the unattractiveness of their current significant other
-facebook babies
-facebook homeownership posts
-this person seemed nice in person but their political views are diametrically opposed to yours and they think people with your views are monsters
“Landslide”
OH GOD ARE YOU ME
feminist rage
holding back tears in the grocery store
genuine love and admiration for a baby that is not your own
grocery store or bus, the two worst offenders for tears that need holding
when you put on nylons because you want to look like agent carter and then you realize that you haven’t shaved your legs in so long that it shows through the nylons, but you’re almost late for work and don’t have time to go shave so you just go.
switching to the really thick stockings that cover up leg hair but they’re not transparent enough so they make you look like you’re wearing colored tights and the overall effect is frumpy with a hint of 80’s
and then you can feel your leg hair rubbing against the nylons and it’s like the sensory equivalent of nails on a chalkboard
The worm ghost feeling prompted me to go read Mallory’s Text Messages From a Ghost series on the Hairpin, which inspires its own unique index of Feelings
Spiders
So tired you feel like your entire body is shimmering in and out of space-time
I call this feeling “grad school.” And then you have a single cup of coffee at the end of a week of shimmery-tiredness, and it feels like you’re going to explode. While walking into walls.
I’m happy about not being in grad school anymore, is what I’m saying.
2 p.m. ennui.
Wanting to eat all the chocolate in the world and also wanting to cry and also everything smells bad but you have to stay at your desk and work and not cry and not eat chocolate
(AKA PMS)
I thought it said “sidewalk lioness” and I’m sad that it didn’t because I have definitely felt that before.
– Other people’s essays about their first forays into online dating after divorce
– A person with whom you share sexual tension engages in passive social media interaction (inclusive of subset emotions: a person you find attractive likes your Instagram selfie; a person you think may find you attractive favorites your tweets)
– The peculiar sadness of drunk-ordering Domino’s even though you live in New York City
This one is a hard one to generalize, but for me personally it’s “non-Vietnamese people who have visited Viet Nam in the 1990s-present before I have” because I still haven’t gone.
I guess “you are an American child of refugees from a country that had travel restrictions through part of your childhood, so it’s beome almost a mythical place in your mind, but now there are no travel restrictions and it’s become a TOURIST SPOT. you still haven’t gone yet because you are afraid of spending money after being raised by frugal refugees and you’re afraid of being judged as being too American.”
It needs work? Yeah.
Seriously, I will still not get over sitting near some middle-aged couple of the bus, being dismissive of visiting VN because “it was too touristy now.” AHHH
ETA: in case anyone is wondering, this could be simply described as “jealousy, mixed with guilt about said jealousy and happiness for the other person.”
a lesser feeling, but related to yours: when rich people discuss their imminent or just-returned-from vacations to the beach town that you’re from, but can not afford to go visit.
But then it wouldn’t be so eloquent or evocative. Re: your ETA.
Waking up groggy from a long nap, with grey winter light coming through the blinds, looking at the clock that says 6:00 and wondering, “wait, which 6?”
“Car exhaustion,” “bread and crying,” “late for something,” “emails,” and “sidewalk loneliness” have been my whole life since I moved. Trying to soothe myself with “pictures of happy dogs” and “hand down your pants” with mixed success. Moving is rough, man.
Other feelings:
Having to move back in with your parents and realizing it’s no longer home anymore, but nowhere else is either, and maybe nowhere will ever be home
Having a feeling you want to eat, but there’s no Jess Zimmerman guide for eating that particular feeling (a subset of saying bread and crying)
Waking up in the middle of the night and moving in your bed and encountering an animal you didn’t know had gotten into bed with you
Buying whole, single spices
The contended emptiness that is walking on a winter day so cold you can only focus on walking
The untidy house is annoying me but on the other hand couch (closely related to ‘cleaning: why can’t I do it from the floor.’)
40% off all fabric
My cat is cuter than all your cats so sorry for your life
But what if mum dies
Willing to go to work except I don’t want clothes
Fitbit shame
Lying to fitbit shame
It’s 3am and I think I need to break up with my partner but I will have returned to denial by morning so any tough truths I accept will be meaningless tomorrow but let’s retread them all anyway
Online shopping ennui.
Watching terrible movies you once thought were wonderful.
Real-life shopping ennui.
The self-satisfaction mingled with embarrassment at realising the intentions of a fictional character are the opposite of the way you read them as a child (CC: the baroness in The Sound of Music).
Watching movies or reading books you have always known were objectively terrible but still loving them for the way you once unashamedly loved them.
“Horror at suddenly remembering something stupid you said a decade ago”
Closely related to “thinking through the things you said today that were okay and not too embarrassing and suddenly realizing a way in which something you said could be horribly misconstrued and did they think that’s what you meant?”
Changing an email to “mark as unread” for the 17th time because you will deal with it later, seriously
Convinced something is stuck in your teeth
Pretending to be on your phone instead of interacting with strangers
Hate-reading advice columns
Suddenly remembered existence of student loans
Itchy
Kitten snuggles.
Kitten snugglefarts.
David Bowie.
There Are YOUTHS Everywhere.
Persistent Dude On The Bus.
Also: German (language).
may i add Crying About Sandwiches (similar to Bread and Crying) and 6 am
Prad – feeling sad and proud at the same time – like when a child uses wheelchair and their dad loves them so much they get a wheelchair to ride around in too, so their kid won’t feel alone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxQltMDzQ1c
the counterpoint to Joyce Carol Oates’ awfulness: the unceasing joy that is watching Rob Delaney and Margaret Atwood flirt on twitter.
In the 90s, Sassy Magazine kindly condensed “Horror at suddenly remembering something stupid you said a decade ago” into “déjà ew,” and for that alone, I’ll always feel grateful to Jane Pratt.
Going into a feminist sex toy store and pretending to consider everything on display when you know you’re only going to replace your broken hitachi magic wand.
Comeback Replays: a subset of Sports and Crying
Can we add poorly timed tequila shots? because I've been doing a lot of those since grad school. Ice cream leaves me feeling better the next day though.
lying awake on christmas eve trying to remember exactly what it felt like to be excited for tomorrow and failing
A minor nit, perhaps, but if these were indexed they’d, you know, be in alphabetical order. With locators, like maybe dates 😉
Drinking spiked tea out of a measuring cup after seeing your ex’s new relationship status on fb and then liking it