"Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in 'sadness,' 'joy,' or 'regret.' Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say,

• the happiness that attends disaster
• the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy.

"I'd like to show how

• intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members

connects with

• the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.

"I'd like to have a word for

• the sadness inspired by failing restaurants

as well as for

• the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.

I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever." -- Jeffrey Eugenides, excerpts from Middlesex

So here is a list of my own hybrid emotions:

• the sadness of a person who have done you wrong and is now dying/being given justice and asking for forgiveness
• after a terrible thing happened, that feeling you get when you take a deep breath and feel the world suddenly slide back into place, solidly, surely, and you know that everything is going to be okay
• being disappointed but not knowing what you were expecting in the first place
• the unresolved pain of losing someone you could never get close to
• the frustration of finding a polite way to get rid of someone + the nervousness of trying not to hurt their feelings