Sometimes language is inadequate in capturing the more ineffable aspects of existence. For example, I am unable to describe this feeling I get sometimes. I’ve looked for a word, but never found it, and any attempts to describe the feeling have always been constrained by the language at my disposal. It’s frustrating – I’m always grasping at words. Then the meaning I’m trying to convey becomes diluted, hazy.

These are some attempts over the years to articulate it:

“It feels like this big block of emotion is lodged in my soul”

“I could describe it as sadness – but it’s less visceral – it feels like trapped pain manifest – a longing – a loss – but a longing/loss of what?”

“What is this feeling? Maybe it just transcends language – perhaps it should just be felt and not understood – but where does it come from? Is it just random? Surely not. Which implies some causation. So what’s the cause? Where does it come from?”

“It feels like the muffled cries of my soul”

“I feel detached from reality, nothing has meaning to me, everything I feel feels inauthentic and forced. I’m drifting through life trapped inside a lifeless body. I’m not really living at all.” (2020, although this strikes me more as anhedonia)

None of those momentary reflections really capture the feeling. I’ll try now to elaborate:

It’s like a frustration, a longing, a deep existential unsettlement. But it has no visible cause. It’s just there. It borders on various negative affects like sadness, frustration, anger, but never crosses those borders. No tears ever come. A tightness in the chest and dulling of the senses. A muffled will, a stifled vitality.

It feels familiar. I can almost remember feeling it when I was younger. However, when I was younger I think it would get mixed in with all the other natural stressors of adolescence, spiralling into something much bigger and more intense than the feeling itself. 

The lack of any clear cause of the feeling made it harder on two levels. One, I felt guilt and shame. How could I complain of my suffering that was seemingly from nothing, that felt completely created by myself, when so many others have real, legitimate causes for their suffering, suffering to which mine must pale in comparison. Second, no clear cause means no clear direction to aim my healing. When you feel grief, you can orient your healing around that loss. When you feel anger, you can aim your healing towards, or away from, the cause of that anger. What do you do with an abstract suffering that you can’t express and you have no idea from where it came? I did what I think most people do. I just lived through it.

It became clear a while ago that there was no word for this feeling. The closest I’ve found is the clinical, semi-meaningless word: dysthymia. However, I recently came across this beautiful, untranslatable Russian word:

Тоска

(Pronounced Tos-ka)

Vladimir Nabokov, Russian-American author most famous for Lolita, beautifully encapsulated in English, as much as is possible, the sentiment of this word:

“No single word in English renders all the shades of tоска. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, lovesickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”

Sometimes you read something and it speaks to the thinking you. It’s interesting, or it’s pretty, or it’s insightful. Sometimes you read something and it speaks to the essential you. It makes contact with that deeply guarded Self in a way that could never be expressed in words, or even thoughts.

For me, Nabokov’s description does this. I envy the Russian who hears that word and knows, in a felt way, what it means.

Having reflected extensively, and often compulsively, on the potential root of my tоска, I think that there might be just some random neurological wiring that at least partly causes it, and partly that, upon being felt, I was unable and/or unwilling to be vulnerable and express it, meaning it stayed within (as it does for many people). Layer upon layer of repressed emotion, with no proper outlet, combined with the inherent stressors of existence, creates an internal pressure. The way this pressure manifests is highly individual, but it always manifests.

I initially wrote ‘neurological defect’ but changed it. Despite the ‘woe is me’ sentiment of this writing, I am grateful for my tоска. This feeling has underlain a fascinating, ongoing journey of the discovery and development of the person I am and want to be. Through it, I have found a wonderful meaning to my life (to support others in psychological distress), a profound self-esteem (through the resilience it required), and a permanent curiosity as to the inner workings of the mind.