Dislocation
12 August 2026
There’s a word that I have again and again returned to when discussing a particular negative feeling: dislocation. Part of this is because I have a history of knee dislocations, but not all of it.
What do I mean by dislocation? I mean those times where you have multiple areas of your life with parts going very well and others going very poorly. There may be an extraneous shock applied to one of the areas. There may have been a tragedy. You may just feel like it’s not going the way you wished. And yet, in another part of your life, there is profound enjoyment and hope and optimism for good reason, because you have a lot going for you. When these two areas of your life collide in the sense that you are in one and then you are in the other and then you are in one and then you are in the other, I find that I feel lost in a way that I rarely am. I find it very difficult to come to terms with the overwhelming positivity of one area combined with the despairingness of another. It seems to not make sense. It seems to be discontinuous. It seems to be dislocated. I seem to be dislocated. That’s the feeling that I have, when I am ripped from the arms of hope and thrown asunder into darkness and grief and negativity. It’s very difficult to marry the two. It’s very difficult to make sense of that as a human. And the closer that you experience the positivity, and the negativity, the more that there is this sense of dislocation. You don’t know what the centre of gravity ought to be. You don’t know whether you should feel happy. You don’t know whether you should feel sad. It’s a really horrible, horrible feeling. And it’s a feeling that I think is far worse than the negative emotion itself because it brings with it a concoction of guilt and bitterness and envy and a great potion of negative energy that you feel like you don’t have reason for, given the positivity. It is as if the mere existence of that positive side of the coin is precisely what turns the other side even darker and taints the whole thing. You can’t enjoy the positivity because at any moment you might descend, and yet you can’t wallow in the negativity because you’re equally aware and appreciative of this other side. Now, that’s life. What I’m describing is life. It’s the entire beauty of life. It is exactly what makes us so alive. That ability and tendency for the world to turn towards you and away from you and to switch and to spin. It’s a big reason why people watch and play sports or games. These are, in a way, lower stakes - or at least less personally affecting - versions of what I’m describing. Just ask any football fan who has watched their team score a goal and then watched it be disallowed by VAR. The dislocation is in a sense necessary because life is not continuous. There has to be some dislocation. And yet it is a thing that makes it very difficult to be. It’s the most difficult thing that I have contended with. That there is darkness will always feed back into the light. I don’t want to seem despairing here because I’m not. There is that positive side always. And I’m lucky that there has been or that it is in my attention so often. But it doesn’t help to hold that thought when you’re in the moments of negativity, because that sense of dislocation is so all-encompassing that, well, there’s no other way to describe it than being lost. You’re in a place where nothing of one affects any of the other. Where the joy of yesterday is merely a contrast with which to beat today’s self. All progress ceases to progress and rather only makes clear how far away you are. If I had any wisdom I would end with it here, but I don’t. The dislocation is simply a thing I have learnt to be with and recognise so that I may arm myself with the joys of yesterday and tomorrow in the grief of today.