I’m getting worse in my health again. I give up – I just have to accept that we won’t be doing all the fun things I had planned, in the four remaining days before Johnny returns to the States. I feel frustrated.

But ironically – when I surrender to the reality of things instead of pushing for the idea of what should have been, I feel less anxious. I’m thinking about what my therapist used to say: “your fantasies will always kill any sense of genuine happiness because reality will never be able to live up to them”. As an artist and a person who loves to spend the days inside her own head, it’s a harsh truth to take in. “No artist tolerates reality”, Nietzsche suggested. It’s a difficult balance for any artist to live equally inside their own head as in reality.

I’m always chasing magic. The magic in other people. The magic in feelings. In situations. Within myself. But the paradox of chasing magic in everything is that I sometimes miss the magic of reality. The one I’m not chasing.

It’s tragic and funny at the same time. A perfect subject for a short story. I might write it one day. But I’m not planning on it because then it probably won’t happen.