Apomakrysmenophobia.

How would you even go about pronouncing it?

Apo-ma-krys-menophobia?

Apom-a-krys-menophobia?

Apom-ak-rys-menophobia?

Having failed to find any guidance online, I’m going with #3.

I’m having a lot of fun with the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, the brainchild of Idaho-born, Geneva-raised, Minneapolis-based John Koeing whose

English word-construction project […] seek[s] to coin and define neologisms for emotions not yet described in language.

Koenig is a man of many talents: video maker, voice actor, graphic designer, writer. The project started as a blog, then moved to YouTube, and finally came out as a book from Simon&Schuster.

My word for today is Apomakrysmenophobia:

n. fear that your connections with people are ultimately shallow, that although your relationships feel congenial at the time, an audit of your life would produce an emotional safety deposit box of low-interest holdings and uninvested windfall profits, which will indicate you were never really at risk of joy, sacrifice or loss.

Thankfully, I don’t suffer from this condition.

That’s not to say that I don’t have shallow connections with people. Of course, I do. At varying times in my life, those shallow connections featured strongly. Before social media, I collected people as others might have collected stamps. I invested an inordinate amount of time into hanging onto and cultivating these connections.

And then, one day, in conversation with a friend in Los Angeles, they commented that they had enough friends.

That I remember that conversation as clearly as if it were yesterday says a lot for the profound impact it would have on me when, years later, I realised the import of what they’d said.

I. Have. Enough. Friends.

At the time, I was of ‘the more the merrier’ persuasion. Back then I had the energy and the time to fan the flames and keep those hundreds of fires burning.

But I grew up. I grew older. I grew more comfortable with who I am.

Now, my emotional safety box is full of a few high-interest holdings.

You know who you are.

Thank you for being there.

PS. There’s always a little more room in that box 🙂

PPS. Photo credit to Ginger Paque.