Seems Approriate to Me.

FUTURE


Erosion of the will
prog. Mars square Neptune
Mid-May 2015
until mid-July 2018

(Please note: Chi dumped me on May 28, 2015.)

You may be wandering about in a fog at the moment, and
your judgement is probably not at its best. For this reason it
might be wise to avoid making important decisions, particularly regarding arrangements with others which involve contracts or verbal agreements. Something young, childlike and naive is being stirred in you, which wants life to be a perfect, beautiful place in which nothing bad can happen. Your idealism is likely to be very strong at the moment, whether about individuals or spiritual or political aspirations; and you may exhibit a tendency to be gullible and easily exploited. 

If you have any inclinations toward taking the easy route, you could find yourself doing the exploiting and involving yourself in shady or illicit situations with shady or illicit people, before
you have even quite realised the implications and possible
consequences of what you are doing. For this reason it is extremely important that you have a clear sense of what is happening inside you; for only then can you trust yourself to
make sensible and positive choices.

There has always been a deep idealism in you which you may not have acknowledged or expressed in your outer life. In the past it may have worked covertly to make you vague and indecisive about any action or goal which involved your defining your own separate interests and will. Now this idealism and yearning for perfection may be rising to the surface, making you long to abdicate responsibility for your life and rest in the secure care of someone or something bigger and stronger than you. This potential passivity, and the fantasies that are likely to accompany it, are not inherently negative. They could be immensely creative and could help you to express a gentle, compassionate and deeply imaginative side of your own nature. But the more unconscious you are of your longings, the more they are likely to permeate your decision-making right now, causing you to secretly choose people and situations which promise you something for nothing. 

There are times when life does offer free bounty; but this is not one of them, however much you might wish it. In your personal life too, you may be hoping that someone will come to redeem you and banish all loneliness and conflict. But even if someone did turn up with these credentials, full of spiritual or sexual promise, you might have to pay a high price later.

You may feel inclined to escape at the moment, because you
are being called upon to take charge of your own life and
probably don't really want to do so. Try to avoid the comfort
of drugs and alcohol, even if these seem to temporarily ease
any feelings of frustration and unhappiness. You may feel
deeply discontented, but the illusory bliss of such substances
will not help you. 

Your discontent may be linked to impossibly
high ideals which at other times you would recognise for
what they are. You may want something more than any
human being can offer; and you may want life to be like
Eden, without the snake. You will get neither at the moment.
But you may get a glimpse of life's hidden unity, which could
awaken a deep religious or spiritual commitment. You may
also glimpse universal images which deserve to be expressed through artistic media. 

Perhaps beneath your discontent you need to find your own hidden mysticism and artistic feeling. If you can, you may not feel so vulnerable and powerless.

Alone.

PRESENT

After writing the blog before last, I found myself very seriously depressed. 

I realized that I really do have a fundamental need for companionship. For something other than people at work and casual acquaintances. Those people aren't close; they don't really know me. And if I died tomorrow, they wouldn't really miss me. 

I’ve had to cut family mostly out due to the intractable mental health issues, and the family I have who are supportive are many states away. The same for the close friendships I do have.

It’s not like I haven’t tried to find like-minded people. I have been widowed three and a half years. I have attended rune classes, astrology classes--all things I'm interested in, and I want to meet people who share that interest. I belong to two writers' groups. (That is, after all, how I met Simon and Chi.) I travel for work. There's only so many evenings I can go out places. I'm also trying to jog and get exercise, and that takes time.

The fact is, I am still really, really

                                                                          really, really

                                                                                                    really, really 

                                                                         LONELY.

And there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it. I clung to the idea of Chi for as long as I could, but either the astrology is wrong and he doesn't show up...

or he does show up and he's juuuuust not quite ready for prime time.

In that case, I have to throw him back. And who knows? If you look at the astrology, I have a good chance of seeing him again no matter what, but if he looks sick, I'm throwing a BIG monkey wrench in that timeline. 

It could be that if I do, I never see him again. 

And, if he's determined to stay a sick codependent, and never to get his feet on the path to wellness and STAY THERE,

it's the best thing.

MY life is a place you come to GET WELL. (If he wants to be sick, he doesn't need me for that.) 

I'm pleased to say it looks like there are opportunities for me to find someone else someday, but sadly, those aren't coming for a long

              long

                                      LONG

                                                                   long

time.

I'm beginning to understand that you can't simply order the Universe to pony up with what you need. I need close friendships and supportive relationships, people who feel like family. At least one or two people, anyway.

I've been widowed almost four years, and nothing like that has shown up. I can't make it show up.

And when the Universe just won't show up with what you need, there's nothing to do but go without it.

That was making me very, very sad. Very, very depressed.

When I was young, I used to live in a dreamworld. I'd make up stories--when I was a young child they were about talking animals--and that sustained me in a world of cruel schoolmates, and a mother who just wasn't all there. 

Then I lived in another dreamworld: I was going to be a writer and I was going to publish this and this. And these dreams mattered because they were going to help people.

Now I know better. I was married to a writer who made the finals for two national awards, and most people have never heard of him. It really doesn't matter how good you are. In a field that is in any way artistic, it really doesn't matter if you are any good at all.

A person needs a sense of companionship, and also needs a sense of worth. At least I do, and without either, I find I am very, very depressed and really, really struggling.

Why am I here? What is the point? How do I make my life feel satisfying?

Because directing a sick codependent onto the right path, should I once again be called upon to do so, is a worthy thing to do, but it does have the unfortunate side effect of leaving me all alone indefinitely.

I went early to the movie dinner theater, and I was sitting outside typing blogs, munching popcorn, and enjoying a strawberry mango lemon drop.

And I noticed how nice it was outside. Sunshine, beautiful weather. Just a few yards away, a sparkling fountain tinkled diamond water in a dozen little waterfalls. In front of me, brilliant pink flowers nodded their heads outside an iron picket fence. 

It was just the sort of thing Simon, or Chi, would have loved. But I was there alone.

And I realized that Simon is still there with me, as a guardian angel, whether I can see him or not.

And Chi? Well, it's his choice to miss times like that. It's his choice to be well, or to stay ill. It's his choice who he wants to be with, and whether he wants to let old child feelings of unworthiness and guilt grab the bit and carry him away like runaway horses.

Because that is all they are. Old child feelings. NOT fact.

I will still be there, just alone. And the flowers are just as lovely, and the fountain just as grand.

I reread what I was writing, and I know there is wisdom in it. I know that most people drawn into affairs will never consider these things, and most people drawn into affairs will therefore cause a lot of trouble and ruin a lot of lives. I know that I am wise to see what I see, and brave to plan what I plan. 

I know that I have worth.

I have to believe that what I write still has some worth, even if only ten people even see this.

That's pretty much all I can hope for, and that's pretty much all I have.

I know I'm a good person, and I deserve love and companionship, even if I never find it again.

I can't make the Universe show up with it. It shows up, or it doesn't, and if it doesn't, I have to find a way to sit here alone and survive. 

I can't run back into the arms of a sick codependent 

who can't find the courage to buck friends and family who don't understand

that he needs to leave another sick codependent. 

I can't ruin his life enabling him to remain sick, or mine enabling him to stay with me and show me a fake face.

I need a real relationship with someone who is willing and able to remain real. 

And if the Universe decrees that I've already had my last one, it's my job to live my life as it is without going nuts.

Life isn't always happy. It doesn't always bring us what we need. The objective is to survive in spite of that, and to do the right thing anyway. To learn to live without what we thought we needed. 

After such a happy time being married to Simon, I thought I needed a relationship like that in order to survive.

I guess my real job must be to learn to live without closeness in my life. If this wasn't my real job, the right people would be showing up now. They're not.

New project: Quit running around looking for people and accept that right now I'm not meeting any. Live my life utterly alone and learn how to be happy, utterly alone.

And two thoughts accomplish that: 

1.) I Have Worth.

2.) What I write has worth. Whether anyone sees it or not.

Your Best Behavior Really Is Best

PAST

(This post is a little facetious…but only a little.)

So you’re interested in somebody married. They’re interested in you. Why is it a good idea to be On Your Best Behavior? (i.e., NOT sleeping with the person, NOT dating the person, NOT taking the emotional place of their spouse in online conversations, etc. In other words, “I’m interested, but I won’t do ANYTHING with you unless/until you are no longer married.”)

1.)    You really don’t, you really don’t, you REALLY DON’T, have ANY CLUE what kind of emotional or psychological problems this person has. For instance, if he’s a sex addict, along the lines of Anthony Weiner or yesteryear’s J.R. Ewing, you will get USED and LEFT.

2.)    If you compete with the spouse, and that person finds out their husband/wife is cheating with you, you are prompting better behavior on the part of that spouse. Assuming your beloved is NOT a sex addict, serial womanizer, or just plain psychopath, they want to be with you because they are not happy at home. Now the spouse knows, and will clean up his/her act, at least until you are a memory. Let that spouse hang themselves, please. If your beloved can’t leave because every time he or she tries, the spouse becomes more loving again, finds some way to blame your beloved for all the problems, and your beloved feels guilty, don’t prompt that spouse to be loving! Let that person be their real self. 

3.)    Now the spouses go to marriage counseling. Now you’ve just prolonged the marriage. Especially in the case where it’s clear someone is experiencing out-of-this-world cruel or unusual behavior and that person really should be getting their ass out of there!

4.)    As detailed in this post, if the spouses should really stay together, you won’t win anyway. You’ve just broken your own heart, and you’ve damaged the marriage possibly forever.

5.)    If your beloved is running around cheating with you, you are asking that person for dishonest behavior and promoting poor relationship habits. If this person has problems in this area anyway, you are making them worse. But, should you win the person away from the spouse, what do you need? You need honest behavior and good relationship habits. And, for the entire period of the affair, you’ve been asking for exactly the opposite.

6.)    If your beloved is cheating, chances are that person is having a hard time being him/herself authentically in his/her life. This is a serious life problem that one day that person will have to confront and solve if ever they’re going to be happy. You are allowing that person to bleed off the pressure to do this. Why should they confront hard questions about their personal happiness, their spouse, their marriage, what they want for their life, and their own behavior? They can masquerade to friends and family that everything is fine, and then come get their intimate needs met with you. Where is the impetus for them to confront and make constructive changes in their life? You just took that away. You’re making dysfunction easy for them and enabling them to continue a pattern that hurts them, the spouse, and you.

To Be Yourself or Not to Be, That is the Question

Will the person your lover truly is please stand up?

FUTURE

It’s amazing what I’ve come to understand through having this experience. 

1.)    If a person refuses to be honest about who they really are, YOU DON’T HAVE A RELATIONSHIP with that person. It may look as if you do, it may feel as if you do, but really you don’t. (And I have to interject here: WTF?? Isn’t it the whole point of relationship to be known and loved for who you really are?)

2.)    It isn’t possible to experience happiness in your life without LIVING AS THE PERSON YOU TRULY ARE. 

3.)    I read this once in a book about ADD. I don’t think it’s only true of ADHD, it’s true in all of life. What I read was, you either have problems, or you have symptoms. If you refuse to be who you are, and opt instead to be who you have to be to please others, you have symptoms. You have the symptoms of chronic depression, lack of faith in the goodness and purpose in life, sadness, maybe boredom. (And Chi’s horoscope has these themes in spades. When I knew him, so did he.) You can get attached to some outside addiction that makes up for the joy you should feel in being who you really are and doing what you really love. But if you insist on going your own way and others aren’t happy, then you have problems…with other people in your life.

4.)    Why else would you pretend to be someone you’re not? To like things you really don’t like, to pursue a career that really doesn’t make you happy? Someone else wanted you to.

5.)    And here are the problems you will have: One, other people will be mad at you, the way my mother was mad at me if I showed ANY sign of changing my mind about this career I had settled on when I was four. A BBC show about people in this career once played on PBS when I was a little girl. My mother insisted that I watch it and got angry with me when I didn’t want to! (The problem was that the actors were all British and spoke very quickly in strongly accented English, and my eight-year-old brain couldn’t understand what they said. I lost interest because I could not follow the program. And my mother got mad at me!) Imagine the reaction I got when, years later, I did what any high schooler should and explored other careers. What am I doing today? You guessed it. The underlying message from these people is, “You’re supposed to give ME what I WANT!” Or, two, the people are upset and crying. “You want what? You’re divorcing MY MOM! You’re breaking up OUR FAMILY!”

If you have low self esteem, you will buy right into all of number 5. In the first place, you have such low self esteem you don’t believe you have any right to be who you are if someone else says you should be some other way. And you don’t believe you’re good enough for anyone to love you the way you really are.

So, the only person who says they love you threatens to withdraw love if you don’t give them what they want, thus violating your own personhood and your own freedom. 

(Thought:If they don’t love you the way you really are, they don’t really love YOU, do they? They should find someone who’s more like what they really want.)

In the second case, you’ve experienced so much pain through your own low self esteem, and been treated so badly yourself, you don’t want to make ANYBODY else feel that way, ever. Especially not, for instance, your precious children. (Even if those children are, say, in their thirties now and have homes of their own.)

BUT, you’ve lied to those precious children since they were born, about who you really are, the home they were really living in, and the healthiest and happiest way for humans to live. You did it because they were young and little and tender and still forming, and you wanted them to grow up happy and healthy. 

And they did. They did grow up wayyy healthier and happier than you did. And, yes, it’s hard for kids to give up that shining ideal of the way they thought their childhood was, that’s true. 

But if your kids could really understand, do you think they’d want you to be this unhappy? Would you recommend it for them?

                                               ***

Ah, astrology. 


Robert Hand is a famous astrologer from Maine who has written perhaps the best book on transits ever. In astrology, the chart you were born with tells you about your character and your potential in life. Transits are used together with the natal chart in order to make predictions. Your natal chart tells you what will happen; your transits tell you when. 


Looking ahead many years, Chi’s transits start, right about now, to do something very interesting. About two thirds of his transits describe a person who stays on the path he was on when we first got together. A person with lowlowlowlow self esteem, who won’t be himself in relationships, who gives himself away for other people’s approval, and ends up in so much pain he can’t stand it and has another affair. 


(In another relationship. The timing of which, unfortunately, seems to coincide with ME being cheated on.) 


The other one third of his transits describe a person who’s growing, who heals from childhood abuse, who finds his own self worth, who becomes whole and ends his life in a much, much better place. 

My transits describe, uniformly, a relationship with an unhealed codependent that pretty much ruins my life, and whom I eventually have to leave.

I am, understandably, concerned.

Robert Hand writes that each transit between two planets is describing something that’s taking place in your life, in a cycle of events. First there’s a conjunction: from your perspective, the planets are eclipsing one another in the heavens. This formation is often noted when people are starting some new endeavor. Then you get an easy transit as they move apart. A sextile. (These are the degrees in angles as the planets move apart.) 


If you started something that wasn’t a good idea at the conjunction, it will look like it’s working okay during the “easy” transits. Then you hit a difficult one—a square, that’s a ninety degree angle. It denotes a time of stress. If you made a bad decision at the conjunction, it now starts to look bad again. You have the choice: to drop it and start something new, or to try to stick with it. If you stick with it, you will get easy going again. Then comes the second time of stress: the opposition. The planets are one hundred eighty degrees apart. Down below, people are often having some challenging times again. If you didn’t ditch that bad situation when you got the square, and you tried to stick it out, now you will really be sorry. I look ahead to the times I worry about, and here is this same cycle.

If you make a good decision, you don’t have to have a horrible time when the planets square and opp. 


If you made a good decision and things are going well, the square and opp can actually push you into a period of success and further growth. But, as my life progresses and finishes, first, apparently with Chi, and then without him, I have clearly made a very bad choice somewhere along the line. 

                                    ***

Now, what could my bad decision be? 


Here coming up soon I have one transit that tells me I am getting mixed messages from someone, and I’m told that it’s not just him, it’s a problem with the interaction of both people. And when I first read that a year and a half ago, I went,


"Huh? But I love Chi! I’m offering up all the love I can. I’m treating him WAY better than Rory! Why wouldn’t he want me? What am I doing wrong??”

What AM I doing wrong, in this hypothetical timeline that, thank heavens, hasn’t happened yet?


What’s my bad decision?

Reviewing the above, it’s entirely possible that it’s this: ACCEPTING DISHONESTY INTO MY LIFE. The fundamental dishonesty of a person who just can’t accept that he really is an okay guy, and it really is okay to be who you are in your own life. 

Why do I want to make this bad decision?

Because I’m lonely, sad, and unhappy. Because Chi is gone, and because I miss him. Because he’s the only person besides Simon, who ever felt like a soul mate to me, in my entire life. 

Chi can be wonderful. WHEN HE’S BEING HONEST. WHEN HE’S APPEARING AS HIS REAL SELF. Which he did with me once, more than he ever had with anyone else in his entire life, and it was an honor. A privilege. His trust was one of the most precious things I have ever held.

But when I accept an affair because I’m afraid of never seeing him again, I foster dishonesty and unhealthy habits that need to be broken. And it may very well be that because I fostered them here, they stay around for the rest of his life, ruining his life, and ruining my life, too.

Because I was afraid to risk losing him. Because I was afraid he didn’t really love me. Because I was afraid of being alone.

BUT,

If a person lives in dishonesty in his relationships, YOU AREN’T REALLY WITH THAT PERSON ANYWAY.

You are with a picture they are holding up in front of their true face, in order for you to love them.

Codependents do that. Because they believe they are such substandard human beings that no one could ever truly love them the way they really are.

And this is a result of childhood abuse. See how important it is that society helps parents be the healthiest they can be?

The thing is, I want who Chi really is. I know that person. He showed me, back when he trusted me. And I know that person is special. That’s the person I really want.

I may enter an affair trying to reach and keep that person, but because he isn’t strong enough to believe he’s really a good person, that it’s okay to be who he really is, and that it’s okay to leave a situation where he isn’t loved for who he really is,

what I’m doing accepting him in this condition, is encouraging him to keep on hiding who he really is anyway. 
 

Because now he’s got to hide an affair. And he gets to beat up on himself for what a bad guy he is for having one (ignoring all the real reasons there’s trouble in his marriage.) 


And all the real reasons being who he really is—finally, before he dies of old age—is a good thing to do. And I can see this, in our old conversations, I really can. Lines like, when he was about to move out, "I needed to do this anyway for myself. Or I would have died inside." "I feel like I'm moving toward myself. I stand in the distance, waiting. Does that make sense?" "I think my life can only have the chance of being happy if I take charge of it."


*shivers* Yes, it does make sense. (And, no shit.)

I really don’t know if the transits coming up in all of our horoscopes are going to really happen or not. Maybe Chi and Rory made some good decisions at the time of their last conjunctions. Maybe this square works out fabulously for them.

But I did see some photos of Rory’s recent "promotion." And I do think that a picture, in this case, may really be worth a thousand words.

There are some huge transits coming up for all three of us. And the dates all match for each person. Like it or not, these three charts, mine, Chi’s, and Rory’s, are all linked. 

Pluto transits. Seven years. HUGE.

If what’s forecasted actually comes to pass, I need to understand that it’s HONESTY, or it’s NOTHING. My job is to raise the bar all the way to the top, and hold it there. People need to appear in life the way they really are, else there can be no happiness.

I’ve raised the bar for Rory. Chi told me as much the night he dumped me.

I’ve done that for myself. But there’s one person I have so far declined to do that for. 

Chi.

                                      ***

This is going to be hard to do. I love Chi. I miss him. He’s the second love of my life.

But I need to look at it this way.

1.)    What does this person do WAY TOO WELL? Lying, acting, pretending, and duplicity. Not because he's a bad person, but because he's an insecure person. Pretending to be on the outside what others want, in order to get their approval. Because he doesn’t have enough of his own. And what does an affair give you great practice at? Lying, acting, pretending, and duplicity. 


   What’s one thing that, if you conduct a secret affair, cheating on your spouse, you aren’t getting any practice at at all? APPEARING TO THE SIGNIFICANT PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE, THE WAY YOU REALLY ARE. 


   Oh, and what other thing could this sweet, darling, smart, sharp man stand to be better at? Handling anger openly, honestly, and up front, instead of subverting it and getting back at someone covertly while making nicey-nice on the outside. 


   Trust me, nobody wants to be with a person who does that.

2.)    If I should accept a person who refuses to be his real self into my life, I’m alone for the rest of my life anyway! First, figuratively, because THE RELATIONSHIP IS FAKE. I’m not being shared with and trusted with who the person really is, the way I was for the four months we were together, anyhow. Then, literally, because when a person betrays their own soul to show up the way they think someone else wants them to show up, the pain of self-betrayal becomes so great that he starts resenting me, talking about me to other people, attracts another affair, and things break down so badly from there that eventually I leave him and I’m all alone anyway. At seventy-one. When nobody wants to break up.

This is why anything, anything, anything I do in the next six months that supports lying, acting, pretending, or any kind of duplicity constitutes a very serious moral and ethical violation on my part, no matter how Rory’s acting or how apparent it is to me that he really needs to get out of there. (Which was apparent to me when we first started talking, and on the night he broke up with me!) 


And, you know what?? I've actually got a transit coming up advising me of that very thing. Um, guess when that is???


Plus, in the words of astrologer Alice Portman, when she looked at both our charts for me, “These people have to do it on their own, otherwise they don’t learn anything.” Because this person, more than anything else—just as ALL PEOPLE DO—needs to start showing up in the world AS WHO HE REALLY IS.

And demanding exactly that, sticking up for only that, holding out for exactly that, and never accepting less than that for or from that person—

That’s what love is.

NOT, “I’ll love you if you give me this.”

I’ll tell you one thing, “I’ll love you if and when you give me this” wasn’t what my marriage with Simon was all about. Each person was WHO THEY WERE, and that was why we were so happy together.

If I insist on this, and it turns out that I lose Chi forever,

TOO FUCKING BAD FOR ME.

Even if I never find another place to belong, ever in my whole life. Even if I’m sad. Even if I grieve for what might have been. Even if I miss better times. Even if I’m alone for the rest of my life. Even if I never find anyone else, no other soul mate relationship, ever, ever again.



                                      ***

I might need some help with this.

I miss Chi. I have literally pined away for the man for two solid years now.

If astrological predictions come true, I may need to be held accountable. If you’re reading this blog, and a report should show up that Chi came back and we slept together, or we’re carrying on in cyberspace (again), I formally request that my readers show up in the comment box and FLOG ME TO DEATH.

You might even show up sooner than that, if I happen to post up that I've heard from him again.


It’s important.

Thank you.