liberosis

What it means

It is 11 p.m. on a Sunday. You open work email one more time to check that nothing has happened since 10.40. Nothing has. On the rug, the dog is asleep on its back with one leg in the air, and it has not thought about Monday once. You would like, for a week or two, to care about the inbox as little as the dog does. That is liberosis: wanting to mind less about your own life, without wanting any of it to change.

It is a narrow wish. You want the same job, the same people, the same calendar, with less riding on each item. It tends to arrive at the end of long stretches of vigilance: exam season, a sick parent, a startup’s second year. It is often aimed backward at a version of yourself, aged eight or nineteen, who did not yet know which things could go wrong. It is not the same as giving up. People who feel it usually keep checking the email, which is part of the point.

Where it comes from

John Koenig posted liberosis to The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows on Tumblr on 29 September 2013. The Internet Archive captured the post on 23 November 2013. The book from Simon & Schuster (2021) prints the entry on page 46.

Koenig’s etymology starts from Italian libero, “free”, and from the volleyball position of the same name, which may move around the court and substitute more freely than the other players. Wiktionary treats the ending as the English suffix -osis, the one in words for conditions, and gives American and British IPA based on Koenig’s own pronunciation, “lib-er-oh-sis”. It records uses in print from 2015 on.

How to use it

Three weeks of wedding planning and I have full liberosis; I want to be a guest at my own reception. Casual; used as a self-diagnosis, a little ironic.

The late paintings show a kind of earned liberosis: looser brushwork, unfinished corners, nothing defended. Literary; a critic’s word for a change in someone’s work.

What it is not

Natsukashii. Natsukashii is a Japanese word said when the past turns up in the present: an old song, an old friend’s face. It is fond, and it is satisfied by the memory itself. Liberosis may also look back at childhood, but it does not want the memory. It wants the lightness, now, in an adult life with a mortgage. Natsukashii smiles at the photograph of the eight-year-old. Liberosis envies her.

Apathy. Apathy is caring less already, usually without choosing it, and it is felt as flatness. Liberosis is a wish held by someone who still cares a great deal and is tired of the weight. An apathetic person does not open the inbox. A person with liberosis opens it at 11 p.m. and wishes they had not wanted to.

In the wild

• Yorke (Grace Hughes), Liberosis, debut EP, 2020. In an interview with Marx Music she describes the seven tracks as being about moving from adolescence to adulthood.
• I Fight Bears, Liberosis, EP, reviewed by Distorted Sound in June 2022. The review credits the word to John Koenig and reads the Welsh metalcore band’s five tracks as songs about mental health.