Journal

With Halloween being my favourite holiday, I was really looking forward to the party I was going to host. I spent a lot of time and money on a meat pie that would feed over ten people (the money we'd split, the time was on the house); I meticulously assigned each person their duty, meaning who should bring what; I made sure everyone knew the house rules, that we had enough beds for the people sleeping over; I asked my mother if I could have the house a month in advance; I kept counting how many people would show up because everyone kept forgetting to reply (bad sign). But still, I was excited. I got blue light glasses and cut my hair just for my costume (I was the Paul Dano Riddler). An hour before the party, I put up the decorations, I took the pie out of the oven, and I waited for everyone to come.

Now, the problem: one of my friends proposed to bring hashish muffins. Since every time he'd made them before they had barely had any effect on me, and everyone else had had a nice time, I approved it. We all ate them before dinner so we'd feel the effects more - I had a few ghost-shaped crisps beforehand because I wanted to try them before we ran out, hoping it wouldn't nullify the effects. My friend had also said he put very little hash in them, way less than he'd put in his previous funny baked goods, just to be safe. So we ate the muffins, we sat in a big circle, and I began cutting the pie into slices. I began feeling it fairly early: everything became really loud, and I didn't know if anyone was hearing me. I kept trying to shush them, eleven or twelve people screaming at each other right when I heard a noise from upstairs, and didn't my mother say to keep an ear out for my neighbour who just came back from the hospital? So I shushed them and tried to keep cutting the pie, and how many people were there? I cut fifty slices and I was still not done. I hadn't had a meat pie in months and I was dying to try it. My hands were tingling. My face was cold. I cut one slice and decided my job was done, and I wanted to taste it too. It was my party, it was my favourite food. I took one bite, then turned to my boyfriend and said, "I think I'm fainting".

After that, everything is confused. I know everything moved as if lagging, only moving at normal speeds in waves before becoming jittery again. Not just visually: most crucially, everything I felt on my skin was similarly delayed, so I had no idea what I was touching until a good two seconds later. This made it very difficult to move, eat, drink, swallow, speak. I was sure no one had felt the way I was feeling then, and said as much, stuttering. It was true, I had never heard of such a high, and it was far from my first experience with THC. Then I started forgetting. I looked at my surroundings and I didn't know where I was; I didn't know what anything was, or who anyone was. I didn't know what anything/one was named. If I focused I could recall, but then I'd forget again. Infinite cycles of "I am X, you are Y, this is a floor, this is my house" before forgetting again. I didn't know what my mother's name was, or what a mother was in the first place. I prayed I'd faint so it could end, but I didn't. Someone brought a glass with a straw to my mouth but I couldn't swallow, I knew I'd choke. Then the constant sensation of being shaken, rocking, etc. got the best of me. I started puking. The only good thing about my condition was that I couldn't smell anything.

Someone suggested calling my parents, and I said no, no, I don't want them to see this; my mother is so stressed already. It's after this point that my memories get more confused. Ironically, I remember when I couldn't remember anything, but not much after that. Bits and pieces that got to me include: my parents arriving; my stepfather laughing; the cuff of a blood pressure machine tightening on my arm; my shirt being pulled off; the lights going out. I awoke the next morning when the only two people who slept over left my house.

The aftermath isn't very exciting: my boyfriend and I cleaned the house (thankfully, someone else had mopped up the puke, and we just had to wash the floors to get rid of the smell), and the person who brought the muffins only sent us a "sorry" message, although I would've appreciated an offer to help. Details I had erased were filled in, such as my blood pressure being half the regular values, and how they debated having my stomach pumped. The following day I got a fever that fluctuated between 38 and 39 degrees and a headache that still isn't fully gone. We will never know if we got sick because he put more hash in it than he was supposed to or because what he got was contaminated.

I don't know what else to say. I'm sad it went this way, that my favourite holiday was ruined this year, that I didn't get to eat the pie or to spend time with my friends. I'm angry that other people were sick too (though not as much as me, for some reason) and that all that time and money went down the drain. I even had to miss out on an Ethel Cain show I'd been anticipating for months 'cause I still had a fever and low blood pressure days later. Being bedridden for a couple of days means I'm behind on uni assignments. I really have no way to conclude this, there's no bright side to the whole situation. I will pretend that November is still the spooky-scary-whatever season so I don't get too depressed.

Yesterday I turned 23. The age nobody likes you at, if you're more amused by TV shows. For the record, multitasking is possible, but that's a personal matter.

Another very cliché thought, I spent my adolescence feeling older than I was and now I feel like I'm not even 20 yet. I have developed an embarrassing nostalgia for mid-2010s music, and my birthday party will be themed around pop punk songs - only partly because of Blink-182. I don't think I should dwell too much on it, since it has been done to death (oh, my joie de vivre, oh my youthful soul), so I'll make a list of things tnat make me feel old, instead:

• back pain I have to prevent by sleeping in a very specific position that involves two pillows
• white beard hairs
• having to moisturise, lest my skin crumbles off in tiny little flakes
• watching my diet, for 'staying in shape' reasons
• watching my diet, for 'my intestines will set themselves on fire otherwise' reasons
  • bowel issues in general
• not having any idea who the latest singers who only go by their first names are (you're not Beyoncé! You're a gen-z'er who was in a Netflix show!)
• attending Mike Joyce's DJ set and realising my tastes were more similar to the average 50+ year old there than the 20 something year olds I moshed with
• going to house parties with my slightly younger friends and falling asleep at midnight
• seeing pictures of me from 10 years ago where I looked like a person and not a child raised by wolves
  • seeing internet videos I remember the drop of as if it was yesterday say anything over '5 years ago'
• people my age acting like embarrassing millennials
  • for the record, I love millennials. I am a bit of a millennial, culturally. I'm talking about the 'I can't adult today' types. If you're my age you should know better than to say things like that.

I've decided to get in shape, so my July has been dominated by numbers. 15 reps, 30 reps, 15 seconds of rest; hold the stretch for 55, 60, 65 seconds; 267 kcal multiplied by 0.7 hectograms plus snacks equals, minus 5872 steps. I won't describe my body, but it seems to be working.

I've cycled between several fixations over the past few years - not to be confused with the loving kind of obsessions you might've seen in other sections of my website. I'm not sure when the first one was; I know most of them are either related to health or to relationships. I worry about people leaving me, and I have to beg them for reassurance; I've worried that a pain in my abdomen would require surgery, and would get panicky at every pull of my flesh there (though I'm not entirely at fault for that: it was a concern raised by a doctor, and I've experienced terrible pains there before, which have only stopped after one of my medications was upped); I worry about my hair falling out rather often, and have counted every hair shed in the shower for a few months until I learned to estimate the number just by looking (I have managed to keep myself from having anxiety attacks now by keeping a list of local trichologists in my notebook and massaging my scalp for 5 to 10 minutes every day, itself another number); I worried about my cat getting fat, so I calculated the optimal amount of food for her in a day and check her spine regularly; I also check her for injuries every time I pet her, because she has scraped herself with her own claws a few times.

While some of these are more justified than others, they always spiral into anxiety attacks and embarrassing compulsions to check on the respective object of obsession (my stepmother once caught me checking my hair and mocked me for being vain. If she knew!). I believe these health rituals are giving me something healthier to redirect these tendencies onto.

The root problem is, likely, my already present ruminations and negative obsessions (I've struggled with intrusive thoughts for years) meeting grief and guilt over not being active enough in the preceding years. So, I have a cause and I have a solution. I have just saved hours of therapy that I can now pour into more pressing questions, such as how to have a conversation with my father.

Lately, everyone has been talking about Lilo and Stitch because of the recent remake. This made me remember that I have never seen the priginal movie! It's strange, because I have always been fascinated by the sea - I'm told I spent half a year watching Finding Nemo three times a day when I was really young, and after that I got into a cartoon spinoff of Flipper. My mother said that whenever she put it on I'd ask her to turn it off immediately, which means I never saw anything beyond the trial scene. One reason for this might be that I didn't like anything that didn't star animals at that time, and when I got over this mental block my mother and stepfather had found other things to show me.

One thing I do remember - and since I remember it, I must've been around eight or older - is playing a lot of official games centered around Lilo and Stitch: the famous sandwich stacking one, of course, but many others as well. I also read illustrated books with the characters and likely saw bits of the show in passing, so there was a familiarity.

Either way, I knew I had to catch up. I don't watch things made for kids unless I'm in a specific mood, so I didn't know what to expect. With these premises, here are some observations:

One: I was captivated immediately. I usually struggle with my attention span, but watching this I didn't feel the need to look away once. I would joke that it's like Cocomelon, but it wasn't desperately flashy loud like that sort of content is: it's just visually gorgeous and the pacing is good. The scenes are full because there's a lot of substance, it's not just empty key-jingling.

Two: on the subject of quality, I have to say that it's a really good movie. There are a lot of "childish" things I like that I wouldn't recommend to adults (the My Little Pony shorts are an example), but this one is not one of them. While a lot of children's stories are peddled as "working on an adult level too", I feel like this one is a real example of that concept: the plot revolving around Nani and Lilo facilitates this, because a child might relate to Lilo and not understand the implications of the adults' conversations, and an adult will understand what's being said and not feel condescended to by the movie. The dialogue is by no means complex, but the subtext is not spelled out the way it is in many adult films today: it's easy to understand, and you feel like you're watching a story, not listening to an explanation of one.
In short: it's nice to see a movie made primarily for kids that doesn't talk down to them, and that adults will likely also find touching and fun.

Three: the whole time, and still now, I'm sad I didn't grow up with this movie. The characters were a part of my childhood, and I have vague memories and photographic evidence of liking the franchise, but it wasn't the same. Plato's cave and all that. I know I would've loved it if I had tried watching it a little later (takes place near the ocean, family problems, socially troubled young protagonist, aliens), but I remember by that time I didn't like movies anymore, preferring comics and books instead. I'm glad I watched it now, but I think it would've made me so happy if I'd seen it then. The games and books were nice, but the movie is a work of art that I missed out on until now. It's like when new cartoons come out and people say "I wish this had come out when I was a kid", except it did, and in another timeline I did get to enjoy it back then.

Four: one thing I don't think I've mentioned before (but I might write about at some point) is that I'm prone to dissociation and age regression, both separately and connected to each other. Not all my childish interests are caused by age regression, but the way I approach them shifts as my mental state does; at the same time, my age regression is not always caused by dissociation, but sometimes it is, and it makes the experience different. In this case, though, there was some light dissociation thrown into the mix.
My theory is that seeing something that was so familiar and reminiscent of my childhood and yet completely new confused my brain, which sent me into a regressed haze for the rest of the day. It wasn't so bad, as I was home alone and had already done my things to do for the day, but I didn't expect it. I would say, though, that since I was "normal" when I started watching it and I enjoyed the entirety of it, this doesn't impact my judgement on whether regular adults might like it.

This was not a review: much has been said about Lilo and Stitch by people who know more than me about many things (I recommend this video by ModernGurlz, a Hawaiian youtuber I've been following for some time, for an insightful comparison between the original and the remake). You know which page you're on, this is a journal. If you happen to also not have seen this extremely popular movie for some reason, and you're not completely put off by cartoons, you should give it a try.

A few days ago I went to Sheffield, having been invited to a friend's wedding. I've been to England several times, it is likely the foreign country I've visited the most, but I'd never been to the north of the country. It's sort of the opposite of many other places: the furthest North you go, the nicer the people are. And how nice the people of Sheffield are indeed! Not just at the wedding - where nearly everyone had tattoos and a cool story to tell - but in the streets as well: my boyfriend and I kept nudging at each other to catch a glimpse of middle aged men in battle vests and girls with dyed hair. On the train to Sheffield from Manchester, the person reading the stops would read the stops like so: "Stockport, Dore & Totley, and the wonderful town of Sheffield!" It is safe to say it did not disappoint.

I brought a camcorder with me, but most of the footage turned out to be of my boyfriend standing around and smoking. I don't mind that at all.

The wedding

My friend and I met through fandom (some guests really liked it when I told them we went to Twitter together): we became mutuals around two years ago after a brief discussion that is now partly lost due to their account getting nuked, after I'd read some of their fanfiction. They are an incredibly skilled writer, and while I will not reveal their username here for privacy reasons, anyone who has found their writing and read it is very lucky. We met in person while they were vacationing with their partner in my country and I found that they're not only very talented and cool, but also very nice! When they invited me to their wedding I was so excited.

The ceremony was beautiful: the usually cloudy English sky opened up when they exchanged their vows, showering them in golden light that lasted until the late dusk. Everyone could feel their love for each other as they read poems they'd picked for the occasion and put on the rings. After that we got to hug and chat, and although they were very busy chatting with all the guests as well, we were happy to see each other. I also got to see other online friends of mine I hadn't been able to keep much in touch with! I mostly talked with one of them, we caught up after a year of not talking to each other and they were so fun in person too.
At lunch, one of the people who was supposed to be sitting at our table, a certain Brian, did not show up. We constructed a mythology of Brian over the course of the day, thanking him for the food of his we got to share and making up stories about why he wasn't at the wedding - we found out he was in Poland, for some reason. After the lunch, I got to talk more to my friends and catch up. The music started soon enough, and we danced for hours. I don't think I've ever been to such a large event with such good music. My friend joked that I'm a bit older than I actually am, as I have the tastes of a millennial. Later in the evening I Miss You by Blink-182 and ten of us got into a circle and screamed the lyrics in our thick accents. Even my boyfriend, who's usually too shy to dance, loosened up and danced with me. I also shared a dance with some people I didn't know, and with my friend (not the bride) - we spun each other around and jumped and swung. When Buddy Holly by Weezer came on I rushed inside and my friend (the bride) said, "I forgot you're the number one Weezer fan!" and they picked me up and spun me around, which I did not expect! They're deceptively strong!

The day after

While we had planned to go on a walk in the morning, everyone was too knackered to leave the house before around six p.m. We filmed a few buildings on the way to the restaurant - one simply called Pho, located in a lovely little square - and I was very happy to see my friends again! We talked a lot, took a selfie which the waitress photobombed from behind the counter (very appreciated), and went to get bubble tea after. We ran into a random Ed Sheeran concert on the way there! We couldn't see him, but we saw his guitar, which he swung in the air. While he was playing, us non-brits took pictures in a phone booth nearby. We walked our friends home and got to see the town from above with the sunset lighting its silhouette. What a beautiful sight!

I was very sad to say goodbye to my friends, though. I feel a bit childish saying it, but they are just so nice and fun and cool, I wish we lived closer to each other. I can only hope one of us will get the chance to visit the other(s) again soon. In the meantime, we will text and I will wait impatiently for their new writing.

The food

People are always surprised when I say this, but I love British food. I love pies and gravy and parsnips and, as I found out a few days ago, Scotch eggs! It's a shame no British restaurants exist in my city, because no Brit is coming over here to open a restaurant. When I told the other people at my table at lunch, they were very excited for me to try the custard. It is really good, although it's not much different from the thicker version we have over here. All the food at the wedding was delightful too. On the last evening, when we had dinner together, I got to try pho as well. At least that's one thing I can hope to find back home!

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started June 2025

• western barn owl (heard, night, summer)
• eurasian magpie (seen, day, year round)
• hooded crow (seen, day, year round)
• common redstart (seen, day, summer)
• eurasian blackbird (seen, day, year round)
• common chaffinch (heard, day, summer)
• ring-necked parakeet (seen, day, year round)
• collared dove (seen, day, year round)
• common woodpigeon (seen, day, year round)
• rock dove (seen, day, year round)
• italian sparrow (seen, day, year round)
• eurasian scops owl (heard, night, summer)
• stork (seen, day, autumn)