the dictionary of obscure sorrows

liberosis

n. the desire to care less about things—to loosen your grip on your life, to stop glancing behind you every few steps, afraid that someone will snatch it from you before you reach the end zone—rather to hold your life loosely and playfully, like a volleyball, keeping it in the air, with only quick fleeting interventions, bouncing freely in the hands of trusted friends, always in play.

Well here I am old friend. It's been quite a time since I'd last checked in with you but as my friends in the real world can tell you, unless you're in the here-and-now, I'm eternally the friend who is terrible at keeping in touch (this might be because maybe I perversely love those catch-up conversations- where people are forced to summarize their lives of the past couple of passage of time - it's interesting to me what they choose to disclose and what they choose to omit). So it only feels natural that in the wake of some pretty monumental events, that I would let you as well, the blog that hopefully no one reads, slip and fall between the waves. Fortunately now I have the distance and the wherewithal to contend with the reality of the last couple of months.

But I mean honestly, do I really want to linger on the piercing pain of losing not one, not two, not three, but four relatives in the past six months? Oh it feels ever so dull- being confronted with the reality of death forcing one to pontificate on the meaning of life, the omnipresence of death, blah blah blah. I will admit that it was particularly tempting at times to succumb to the lures of religion and it's hollow promises of the afterlife for my family's dearly departed. But reason concludes that it's ultimately it's a sugar-coated fantasy- one that goes down easy but doesn't heal or replenish those which are lost...gone.

Loss is a familiar friend now- no longer this awkward concept that I knew inevitably that I'd have to confront one of these days. Unfortunately now, he/she/it is now ever present. When I leave my family, I clutch them ever more tighter, tearing up, almost panicked at our parting. Armchair psychology allows me to conclude that my recent preoccupation with the ominous natural disaster that it bound to shake our state, "The Big One", is merely another manifestation over my fear of my powerlessness over controlling the fates of those I love deeply. Whaddya think about that Freud/Dr. Melfi/Dr. Phil?