Russian – Vladmir Nabokov describes this word: “No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. 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 or something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”
I think this word describes what I felt before leaving a long marriage. I also felt the need to explain myself for leaving a decent, hardworking man. But I didn’t know how to put the reason/s in a word or words, but the word is toska.
We cause each other pain without wanting to cause it, but ignoring an anguish that develops inside you leads to sickness that manifests in one way or another, and makes not only the person experiencing it ill, but others around them. I don’t feel now that I owe anyone an explanation to choose my life, and how I would spend the many years that I had left to live after my children were out of the house. I’m finding that questions are answers, and the only way to not let them rub you raw is to live the questions, act on them even if you can’t form the questions at the time, but feel them as that sick pining. After enough time passes, you start to realize what the questions were that you could not name,
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