goodbye summer, you absolute freak.

on being haunted by a *very* scary ghost in a foreign country, existential FOMO, and having an anxiety attack in a 7-Eleven

my AC broke at the height of july, arresting me to my sheets with only a fan covered in cat-litter as my aid. in the span of a fortnight, my bed became a humid monastery of sweat and stickiness— my breaths: a meditation; my thighs: two palms, hand-in-hand. the water on my bedside table lapped up memories from mouth to journal. the warmer months of an already climate-changing year blossomed, pulsing in the nights’ howl.

i am called back to a slumber party my friend threw many juneʻs ago. laying on a blanket in her expensive yard, i rested in the fact that the beach was a stone's throw away, that i would not have to eat cafeteria food for three months, and that fetty wap dominated the billboards. a lot has changed about summer since that night together. none of us talk to each other anymore, and i can’t pinpoint when our love shriveled to crumbs. that year, our inevitable differences were tiny lights at the end of a long, adolescent tunnel. we needn't bother holding our breath. 

girls shifted and giggled on the lawn, our laughter tickling the grass. after a game of “would you rather” and a fervent discussion about a god we still believed in, delirium pulled our eyes closed. i took a last look at my best friend, already knowing the familiar bends in her yellow curls. her details were known to me in a way i thought impossible– especially toward another girl. i counted her growing beauty marks and prayed away any future cancers. i enchanted the string between us in hopes that we would never part. stars pecked our noses; trees tongue-kissed above. my fingertips itched. her roots were darker than they used to be. we were getting older.

“i’m not scared right now, but i know i will be later,” i said to the sky and to the constellations and to her, who always listened.

“it’s a good thing it’s not later, then” she declared. i could feel her next to me, a plastic candle in the navy.  “do you think we’ll always be friends?” 

the smell of the ocean and freshly cut grass sang me lullabies as i fell to dream.

every summer since, this realization has grown: it may be good now but i know it will be bad later. i may feel healthy now, but a day exists where i am sick. i am in love with them, but one day we might cross the threshold into eye-rolling. this fear builds up in me most when the seasons change and, since Hawaiʻi only has two alternating weather patterns (very-fucking-hot and less-fucking-hot with some rain), i sense summertime with nature’s inconspicuous signs— that is, once the algorithm feeds me videos of music festivals and dating shows. it is then that i know the world is waiting for me to be a hot girl doing hot girl shit.

people expect a lot out of summer, and this particular season came wrapped in an obnoxious– albeit charming– lime green. june, july, and august slipped through the margins of what felt vloggable and i spent my personal days as normal: growing back a virginity with a 100+ day celibacy streak, aiding heartburn with pepcid, and paying tithe to my omnipotent fear of things, unseen.

i’ve had some note-worthy anxiety attacks throughout my life. to name a mere few: 

2022: stopped the boarding process in lax because i heard a woman throw up in the bathroom. unable to shake the thought that i would “last of us” la county, i hyperventilated so hard that an officer named sargent law (yes, that's his real name) wheeled me out to the parking lot because the flight did not clear me.

2012: disrupted my mother’s r.e.m. sleep by waking her up every night. she told me that i should pray to jesus, resulting in many a night screaming “jesus save me,” into my tempurpedic pillow. i do not miss believing that anxiety was a demon attached to my spine.

2015: watched ‘shutter island’ with my grandfather (rip eric) and panicked because… well… i watched ‘shutter island.’ that shit is scary.

out of all my panics on my resume, my favorite has to be the one i suffered this summer; during my trip to japan. there i was, squatting in the meiji jingu forest. my friends and i had been walking for 20,000 iphone-recorded steps not 24 hours after touching down in tokyo (although the international travel wikihows urged us to take it easy on the first day, they didn’t teach us to resist the temptation of thrifting.)

as i entered the archway to the shrine, the wood committed an unrelenting dolly zoom. school children in navy and white clamored around me, their teachers motioning toward unfamiliar gods. stumbling toward a tree behind the washing station, i felt like an offense to shinto-ism. my brain landed on the sticks in front of me. i tried counting the rolly pollies digging through the gray matter but, deep in the forest’s leaves, eyes the color of lead stared back at me.

hiroaki ota coined a hilarious psychological disorder in the 1980’s called paris syndrome after noticing many japanese tourists feeling nauseated, hallucinatory and paranoid while visiting france. he suspected it had something to do with culture shock and, as i sat in the forest rethinking my life choices, i wondered if paris syndrome could be for the girls that visit tokyo, too. i had expected a lot from this trip. having recently left an abusive relationship, i knew that this adventure could hold the power to divorce me from my exes’ filth. however, these expectations also provided pressure to enjoy my exes absence– to find happiness in walking on the wrong side of the crosswalk— to get laid, fast, and not be sad about it at all.

i was so far away from home.

being anxious has its perks. although dizziness reigns, panic often provides an ability to identify silly and interesting things about the surrounding world. i’ve become a master of distraction in hopes to aid my sense of doom. on my trip this summer, i noticed many gems that made great additions to my 5 things you can see coping ritual: 

• piss buttons: japan has buttons to press when you shit or piss so no one can hear the sound of your excretion. 

  i found this out during a nail appointment where i requested two nails short. when the women finally realized that i was not, indeed, a bowler, they blushed a shade redder than tomatoes and continued on with their nail tech-ing. at the end of the appointment, i offered a tip that they, of course, refused and i used their bathroom. when i discovered and pressed the piss button, i screamed at the loud noise.

  

  a hurried group of nail techs waited outside for me to finish my pleasantries. i think, in my short time confronting a japanese bathroom, they feared i had fallen into the sewer or suffered a spontaneous death. when i asked why they had this piss button, they laughed, pulled out their google translate and said– 

  

• hinge girl: i fell in love with an australian on my third day in japan. i met her on a dating app and, although she was only looking for friends on summer vacation, i couldn’t help but follow the line of her marble hands as they peaked out from her sleeves. she had a lot to say about art, love, and “nocturnal animals” when walking through the tokyo zoo, together. i particularly enjoyed watching her face upturn toward cooling mist that fell from small hoses in-between exhibits.

  anxiety filled my day in normal amounts, accumulating toward an anxiety attack at a 7-Eleven. through my terror, i sat next to hinge girl and ate a soft-boiled egg. as my tears replaced shoyu salting the yolk, i apologized profusely. she touched my palm. “i have autism too. you’re not bothering me at all”– a heartbreaking acceptance coming off of a relationship where i would have been scolded. thank you, hinge-girl. thank you.

• a very specific cat: i frequented a cafe every morning, built around the owner’s two specific cats. there was something very intimate about the experience (and silly being in a cat cafe with two hyper-local cats). every morning, i asked for the same breakfast, thanked the spotted one’s owner profusely, and read a homemade photo-book about him as i sipped on black coffee. 

• lesbian bar: i went to my first lesbian bar. although japan is not dangerous for queer people, it is not very prideful. i find it ironic that this was my first time. the elevator to the hidden spot had these stickers next to the floor level.

  

  the smoke in the room hung low, framing the last two open seats. i am not a cigarette girl, so i knew that the poor ventilation would render me to one-drink max before needing to leave. the women around the table spoke japanese that i could, brokenly, understand, words flicking by like a viewmaster: interesting. okay. wow. ummm. a girl with pink hair at the end of the bar weaved her hands through the fog.

  the femme next to me twirled her hair– her eyes stuck to her lap. i struck up a conversation through google translate, despite our shared nervousness. she had traveled an hour to get here. we laughed about school and gasped at our shared indigenousness as an Okinawan and Hawaiian. at 11:30 she promptly got up and explained she needed to catch the last train. i made sure to dm her. no answer. 

  i could imagine her on the bullet train, going back to a life that i would never know. i mourned that our conversation was our first and last. i honored that we shared the same flavor of love across so many miles.

  

• gin: speaking of bars, the alcohol in japan is stellar. one night, i went to a speakeasy bar alone. there were no signs or indications of its existence other than a cult-like logo pasted on a construction wall near the bar corner. through an elevator, door, and smaller door, i arrived at a candlelit, green room. with no menu– i could only communicate my desire through a preferred spirit and taste.

  all night, i got drunk off of gin and wrote pretentious poetry about my bartenderʻs chunky eyewear.

• yokai street: in kyoto, a faceless ghost haunted me. i need to make clear that i do not suffer from sleep paralysis, but every night in our house, i experienced a figure waking me up at 3 am. in hopes to understand this haunting, i visited the yokai museum and, to my surprise, the museum had no attendees– just three rooms up a single flight of stairs. at the top, a room full of paper mache demons and mannequins with masks waited for me with no explanation or guide. although i gleaned more answers from a google search, i walked away from the experience feeling soothed.

when i faced july, i shaved off all of my hair and went out a total of two times: a brat summer party, where i proceeded to get ʻcrossedʻ and hyperventilate in my friend’s car, as well as a coincidental run-in at a chinatown bar. walking from my favorite restaurant to go home, i saw a woman so beautiful that i felt as if all the air in my lungs had been drained. the world fell silent– the buses on the gravel stopped in awe of her. after acting like a middle schooler at a dance for a time, i collected all my courage to give her my phone with this string of words:

i finished summer at the beach, again, next to the beautiful woman from that bar in chinatown. we sat, barefoot, at the shore of a man-made lagoon, under the hanging sky and towering hotels. the sand was empty, not a sunburnt tourist in sight; our milky way peaked behind the curtain of sky and cloud, coaxing us toward each other. we laughed at two men searching for metal in the water, one man cartoonishly lanky and the other short and squat. we made up tales about their secret love affair and, as i looked into her dark eyes, i remembered something i had long forgotten, perhaps in a dream or another life. 

some nights will be spent crying at the foot of your bed and some will finish with a shy kiss in front of your family home’s garage; there is no category or internet aesthetic to halt, freeze, or cope with the magnitude of your human experience– no algorithm to divorce you from your humanness. maybe you are not anxious now, but will be later. maybe you will be in love or a pet will die but, regardless of your pain or ecstasy, there are always complex details to transition you from moment to moment. i could say something cliche here, like: “change is the only constant” and you might roll your eyes, but it would be correct.

my body shifted into focus as i searched for balance against her belt. i wanted to know her curls– fit her details in between the web of my fingers.

“you make me feel good. i feel good now”

i left work early to greet the repair man, dressed in highlighter yellow and stained jeans. he called himself dean and maintained an eager fascination with my AC, describing the unit as “decimated.” i explained that the on-button had been giving out for years and, as i gazed upon the mechanical entrails of my decades-old companion, i felt an overwhelming gratitude for the time it saved me from the sunʻs harshness. i never expected that this machine would give up on me– that the day my uncle installed it was not, indeed, yesterday– that things would be new and then not-new. most of all, i didn't expect to be fine with the reality that we are always shifting– our technology, our people, our seasons.

when done with his work, dean used my bathroom and flushed with the toilet seat open. i could imagine his piss flying through the air, touching my towel, face lotion, and– of course– my toothbrush, but all i could muster in response was a “thank you so much sir”. 

as i say goodbye to summer, i welcome the colder months and the new AC installed in my childhood bedroom. i will still need to use her because i am in Hawaiʻi and it is always, at-least, lukewarm.