dear diary,

i have not been doing so well of late. life has been a tumultuous cycle of friendships, the plague, being plagued of work, not feeling like i am competent, and drowning- the classic aileen mental and physical barrage.

i used to dream that i was drowning, often. swaddled in blankets, i would almost suffocate, only to wake up in a trancelike state and gasp for air. i was not in the sea that i adored.

only at my lowest lows, like this, can i write of these things. before periods like them, i cannot acknowledge my fatigue. i trick myself into thinking that sleep, another day, another week, will solve my longings.

i have ordered a deck of tarot cards off of aliexpress. they will arrive after my birthday. i will ask the already personified cat cards silly questions like “why can’t i love again” and “why do i have trust issues?” (except i already know the answer). i will treat shuffling cards like therapy, as steven mentioned it was created for.

tarot is an educated guess. it is like a hypothesis, but with less evidence, and framed through randomized cats instead of research methods.

i constantly romanticize my summer- of weed, of parties, and work. i want to flipper through the ocean and ride the kinetic energy of waves. i don’t even mind how sand would find itself in my every crevice, or the way i would sunburn from my poorly applied sunscreen. i miss san mateo, san francisco, san jose— every ‘san’ under the sun.

mark my words, sick body. once these pits of former teeth heal- what is stopping me from having a fall as fun as my former summer? it will not be my schoolwork, of which i have promised to throw aside. it will not be friends, of whom i can always make more of. it will not be family, whom i hope to visit more. except it probably will be any or all of these, because i am thinking wishfully right now.

periods of sickness always make me strive to improve my health so that i won’t need to live in pools of bile. they make me want to make the most of days (except that i do that sorta already), except through the idea of making more ‘fun’ instead of mindful, tiring work. i hope i read this when i am unsick. aileen! you need to exercise and eat more.

it is odd and hateful that everything comes out like this, in a public substack. i feel betrayed by my once closest and still closest friend, betrayed by my sinuses, and betrayed by my own temper. i lay sick and sickly in the mind, nauseous but unable to rock away the gaps between my teeth.

my few consolations- how the dentist said my chinese is good, a californian salary, and my tendency to pick the perfect opaqueness of grey. soon, one or more of them will no longer be true.