On this topic, why are we no longer allowed to have spectacular things like nervous breakdowns? I loved that term. I pictured a tower of jenga blocks collapsing onto itself with an impressive crash. Why do we need to make the extreme, all-fall-down horror of emotions and misery more palatable with euphemisms like “ mental health crisis”, “acute stress reaction” or “burnout”. I feel like there’s a problem in not letting anything break down with these polite and politically correct terms, and therefore refusing to go forward.
Another pet hate of mine is that we are classifying people left, right and centre as “narcissists”. Every person I meet now that got divorced has an ex who is a narcissist. Full stop. People can’t just be thoughtless or cruel or spiteful or nasty or unfaithful for the sake of it. In 2025, we need to rush out and label these culprits as having a fullblown scary psychiatric disorder!
Children are no longer just naughty. For a while, we ignorantly labelled just about every child as having ADHD or anxiety, and happily medicated them to the brink of a coma. These days we just say people are on the spectrum, without even understanding what “the spectrum” is.
On a slightly different note, I miss that I could just ignore someone, but even that seems very complicated these days. You can cancel them, you can unfriend them, you can ghost them, unfollow them, block them, blue-tick them and even deplatform them! You do this after you feel the “ick” factor or you see a “beige flag” (this means they are boring in case you are not yet in the know). You can even totally cancel them in real life, but remain their friend online, which is called “orbiting”.
The opposite of this cancelling is apparently to love bomb someone, but in between there is an entire landscape of new terms! Instead of flirting or vibing, we now say “breadcrumbing”. When you keep someone as a back-up and string them along, it is called “benching,” “cushioning” or “pocketing”. The fact that there are three new terms might mean that this overlapping relationship is quite popular. The above terms should not be confused with “stashing”, which is a secret relationship, and I’m guessing the new way of saying you are having an affair.
You can do a bit of “zombieing” and “submarining”, which are to re-appear after you “ghosted” someone. I hope that when they do this zombieing or submarining, the other party responds with cancelling. But what do I know? I’m GenX after all.
Dial-toning is my best! It is when you give someone your number, but have no intention of responding to messages or calls (Like seriously, who even calls?).
Also, news to me, is that you don’t have to be in a relationship anymore. You can now be in a “situationship” which just means it is a relationship, without a label. (But see how quickly we label the narcissist who ends the situationship when they ghost us?) In-between situationships, we can do a bit of hesidating, roaching, kittenfishing, wokefishing, affordating, fizzling or settle for just a texlationship before we do a hard-launch and announce our commitment.
In case you’re not confused enough, we also have to use old words that have been assigned totally new meanings. “Tea” is the new word for “skinder”. Gaslighting, flexing, thirsty, salty and trolling are new hobbies and needs, and even though you have your own first name, you can also be a Karen, a Linda-from-accounts, a Susan or a Stan. But luckily, you can also still be a “Scaramouche” and that’s not changed, or Freddy Mercury would turn in his grave.
With language and labels exploding all around us, I wonder why I still struggle to find the right words powerful enough to express what I feel today. We just said goodbye to a patient after he spent over two months with us. Marcel was in a horrific motorbike accident in the Seychelles and broke many bones, had abrasions, contusions, avulsions and horrendous abdominal injuries. I watched in awe how the medical teams managed to put him together again and how, over his two months with us, he grew stronger and stronger. In the end, he walked onto the plane, a totally whole man. I am astounded at the human spirit and our will to survive. I am blown away at what modern medicine and talented, brilliant doctors can achieve. And then, I am simply horrified that 10km’s away in Tembisa, children are still dying in hospitals from dehydration, malnutrition and untreated HIV. How can we expect language to capture a word, new or old, for this injustice and this miracle, never mind expect our souls and minds to try and comprehend it?
So for now I’ll settle that our world is messy and that labels usually don’t work all that well. Humans are both heinous and heroic. I am feeling simultaneously sad and grateful, hopeful, thankful, sorrowful, joyful, cheerful, mindful, wonderfully colourful, peaceful and delighted. I guess sometimes a simple term like “sadness” is helpful, but most of the time, the world (and people) are probably too complex for a neat, simplistic description on a label.