How I Used Astrology To Figure Out My Relationship

PAST


Note: Sorry if this post seems redundant. YourTango has a large astrology section, and this post is sort of an "audition piece" for them.

I promised y'all a Rory post--about seeing the outcomes of major decisions as two different timelines in your horoscope transits. That one IS coming...next week.

Three years ago, I found myself unceremoniously dumped.

My heart was shattered, lacerated, ripped into a million pieces. I didn’t think I’d live. Worse, I didn’t want to.

The person in question was married; however, he’d moved out, consulted a divorce lawyer, and told me the marriage was over. From what he told me about the way she was behaving, and had behaved for the past twenty years, I could see why. For the past four months, he’d described an emotionally cold and distant marriage, with a woman who alternately bossed and belittled him. It was clear why he’d taken this long to finally move out: he was darling, but he was an adult child of an alcoholic, and I knew everything that meant. (See my article on YourTango, 13 Signs You’re An Adult Child Of An Alcoholic, for more information.)

It was one of those situations where you just know you’re going to be happy together, just like when I got together with my late husband. And then … and then …

*POOF!* He was gone.

Most of us are familiar with those horrible feelings of desperation, those times we’d do anything, and I mean anything, to get our old love back. This is when the desperate turn to astrology.

I didn’t know a thing about astrology. I had surfed the free parts of astro.com, and I had even bought some of their Liz Greene yearly transit reports on occasion. But I had no idea what those little symbols scribbled in the margins meant, or how on earth Saturn could “trine” Jupiter, much less how Pluto could ever “trine” itself! And I’d never bought more than one at a time, because they aren’t exactly cheap, and my money had always been tight.

But now, in the midst of this huge personal crisis, I was at least doing better at work. With that came the ability to buy more than one yearly transit report at a time, and for multiple people. I started snooping. Everything I knew about me, him, her, and their marriage told me it wouldn’t last. He’d have to come back to me; I just knew it. 

Thus began the education of this budding astrologer, courtesy of astro.com.

For those who are as bewildered now as I was then, “transits” refer to where the planets in the heavens are now, in relation to where they were at the moment of your birth. Every time a planet makes an exact angle with the position it or another planet occupied at the moment of your birth, it reflects a mood, a feeling, a quality of time in your life. A crack professional astrologer who reads literally thousands of charts a year notices repeating themes, and will be able to tell you, “Typically when I see this aspect come up in someone’s transits, these kinds of events are what’s been happening in these people’s lives.” When you’re consulting a professional astrologer, or you’re buying a computerized transit report, this is what you’re paying for.

I bought transit reports for myself, him, and his wife for the next few years, buying dates three years apart to save money, as I’d noted that many of the transits spanned over one year and they overlapped one another. I began to read. The first thing I noticed was that everything that appeared in one chart reflected in the other two. That gave me the creeps. Then, as I read on … it happened! Reflected in all three charts was his leaving her and returning to me. In about three years!

Overjoyed, I bought one more set for three years from the last date I’d read. I expected to see that he’d left her for good, and we were happy ever after. 

Um … not so.

Instead, I saw myself left again. Even though the marriage was still rotten, and her behavior had improved not at all, there he was, back home again. She looked supremely happy, and the two of us were miserable. If I thought my heart was broken now, apparently it was nothing compared to what I’d experience then.

What … the … hell?

Of course, after that I had to keep on reading. He was still unhappy at home! Surely, surely he’d be back! And there, two years on, he’d finally had enough, and he was. Our transits reflected a joyous reunion, and hers, frankly, didn’t know what had hit her, despite decades of questionable behavior.

Yey! I mean, normally I feel sorry for the wife, but in this case … well …. 

This had to mean we’d live happily ever after, right? I just wanted that wonderful confirmation, and so I bought one more set, three years farther ahead. And received one nasty surprise.

We weren’t happy. We were having significant problems. Only I was largely unaware of them, because … what?

Here’s where astrology has given me its greatest gift. I was raised by a parent with borderline personality disorder. For those who don’t know what that is, it’s a serious mental illness that wreaks havoc not only on the sufferer, but on any minor children being raised in the home. Because my relationship with my mother was so difficult, I had spent a good portion of my twenties and thirties reading self-help books, relationship books, and adult-child-of books, and because of this, I know a great deal about codependency. Enough to recognize it when I see it described in a horoscope transit.

Astrologers are a poetic lot. Anxious not to antagonize the client, they excel at presenting clinical signs with sympathy and from the client’s point of view. Especially if they’re Liz Greene and their previous career was as a counseling therapist. 

I was reading phrases in his report such as: “If you have allowed your need for closeness with others to obstruct your need to be a separate individual, you may be challenged to assert your own values and ideals with greater honesty and openness. External conflicts and relationship issues may highlight the fact that you need to achieve a new and more creative balance between these two sides of yourself.” “Try not to turn your back on opportunities just because you don't want to upset others or are afraid of seeming selfish in their eyes.” “But somehow what you want may not be communicated properly to those who could help or support you; and you may feel very angry, frustrated, aggrieved or victimised.  You are not wrong in pushing for change and better opportunities.  You may also need to define yourself as an individual more directly within your personal relationships, and this could involve friction with family members.  But you may first have to consider the ways in which you are asking for what you want, and recognise that you yourself have created or accepted the role you are now playing, and others have assumed this is who you are.”

Huh? I thought. This is codependency! What the hell? Hasn’t this person been in therapy for years already? How could he leave her to be with me, and still be codependent?

This utterly confused me. I pondered it on and off for several days, and as I considered it, one solid fact emerged.

Codependent when we met; codependent years later when we finally get together. He’s with me, he’s with her, he’s with her, he’s with me, the family is all upset, the adult children are involved … years and years of drama, this is! 

But during all those years of drama, what was missing? This much-adored man of mine applying himself to his core problems of codependency and low self-worth, studying and healing and getting well—that was what! Look at all the progress he could have made over those five years! But he didn’t. What was he doing instead?

Having an affair with me.

Then I started to recall phrases from my transit reports, about being too needy and anxious, about the need to stay out of power and control. I hadn’t known what to make of those. Me, domineering and overcontrolling? Why, that was his wife, not me!

Apparently not.

What I finally understood, after months of poring over these transit reports, was that, even though I recognized him as codependent from the beginning—I was the one who insisted he start therapy—if I elected to pursue an affair with this man, I would be the person keeping him from what he most desperately needed to do:

Apply himself in therapy to his own problems—not everyone else’s—study healthy relationships, what went wrong in his family of origin, and heal and work and get well.

And that’s a hell of a way to treat someone you say you love.

It was about that time I figured I had better start studying astrology, and learn how to read this stuff for myself, instead of relying on a computer to do it for me, or hiring an expensive professional I know nothing about. Since then, I’ve become a good enough astrologer to cast all our relationship and natal charts, and I can pick out the aspects in ours that reflect the issues I’ve just described here.

This is only the beginning of my story. I plan to post more about it here, from time to time. I’ve predicted events in all three of our lives that actually happened. Last October, there were a number of signs that I would indeed hear from this man after three years apart. It happened. (Only this time, I was ready.)

Most important, I’ve learned so much about myself. It turned out that my charts and transits were pointing out aspects of my unhealed childhood that I never would have suspected still needed my attention, and that’s proven to be an invaluable resource to direct me in my own therapy.

I used to doubt astrology, but after this experience, I see what an important and useful tool it can be. If you’re searching for answers in your own relationship, it’s certainly worth a look.

Avoid the Below-Average Therapist

PAST...

I still remember, and you might, too, the times last summer and fall when I was on here shaking in my size 8 shoes, wondering if Chi would be back when the astrology said he would and if I was just plumb crazy.

I thought, just because I turned out to be right and he DID show up again, that would be the end of my worries. Right?

Wrong.

There turned out to be quite a big difference between what I had expected, through everything I had been reading, and what actually turned out to have happened.

To explain: What was I reading? (And, more to the point, what was I watching? I spent a lot of time on You Tube, watching the fabulous videos put together by Family Tree Life Coaches . Although, I have to say, for codependency, life coach Lisa Romano is quickly becoming a fave.)

I was reading a bunch of stuff by therapists, about all these relevant issues. And the thing is, it's usually the BEST therapists who get books published and put free videos out online. So I was sort of living in a dream world where, wherever Chi and Rory went, they would be getting that caliber help.

It doesn't sound like it, to put it mildly.

I was reading books like Should I Stay or Should I Go? How a Controlled Separation Can Save Your Marriage 

and

The White Knight Syndrome: Rescuing Yourself from the Need to Rescue Others

and

Facing Love Addiction: Giving Yourself the Power to Change the Way You Love

That last one really mislead me, in a way. Not that I didn't see a whole lot of truth in it about me, Chi, and Rory, but from what I was reading there, I at least expected Chi and Rory to reconnect. In that book, the pattern described is: the love addict moves out, and when that person gives up and tries to end the relationship, the love avoidant turns around and tries to pursue the love addict, and for a while things look good. The love addict is happy to be wanted, the love avoidant is happy to have the love addict back again, and they're close again for a while until things get too close for the love avoidant again and the love addict gets too clingy and needy again and well...

...it all falls apart.

I was also, of course, reading the astrology.

Rory certainly had the transits where she could have knuckled down and done some hard work on herself to save her marriage. I saw when they were, and looking up at the above, thinking they were getting that caliber of help, and seeing only what I could see on their Facebooks, it certainly looked like it.

I expected either that they would be fine, or, if they weren't and he came back, it would be because they had a moment of reconnection and relapsed. I thought if he showed up again, it would be my relationship with Chi vs. Rory's relationship with Chi, not my relationship with Chi vs. a total nonstarter and the opinions of family and friends.

Then Chi actually showed up again, and I got the report of what really HAD happened.

Good grief.

Imagine my surprise and dismay when I heard what their therapy experiences had really been like. Imagine my surprise and dismay when I heard that Rory, after attacking Chi with the news that ALL the problems were his fault and she was angry he didn't even want to go to marriage counseling, sort of sleepwalked through it and acted like she really didn't want to be there herself. I thought when Chi left our club meetings and didn't come back, it was because they reconnected and he moved back home.

Well...he'd moved back home, all right. The reconnection bit...not so much. He lived in the father-in-law suite for several months and is in the process of halfway moving back in there again.

Jesus.

I thought I would be peeking back in on a situation in which the participants had done at least SOME work and made at least SOME progress. Not so!

Rory is just as cold and self-centered and emotionally vague and constipated as ever. Chi, instead of working on his own codependency and low self worth--which were the things I talked to him about that day, lo, THREE FUCKING YEARS AGO when I convinced him to go for help, went right back to focusing on other people and other people's problems, and through a combination of family issues, health issues, and therapists I believe were downright incompetent, pretty much hasn't moved an INCH since I last spoke to him.

This is bad. Really bad.

For those reading this, there are a lot of bad therapists out there. If you go to therapy for a marital issue, especially a midlife one, what you need to be seeing and hearing when you start is some assessment of your childhood home and family environment. This is because most marital issues start in childhood, and we all bring any wounding done to us by parents and family on into the present unless and until we sit ourselves down and do some very serious WORK on it.

If your therapist isn't requiring that you do this, you may be spending your money on a rather expensive Band-Aid. Go check out the videos I mention and you will see the kind of approach I mean.

I spent my childhood watching a stuck parent not take advantage of therapeutic materials around her and continue ruining her own and everyone else's life.

I hate to say it, but it kind of looks like I am watching it again.

And that's sad, because what if Chi ever did leave Rory? He's still as sick as a goddamn dog. Now I inherit the problems, and this person has shown little motivation to work on them. Let any family member anywhere in the northern hemisphere wave one of their own problems at him, and...oh...whoops! There he goes...up...up...and AWAY to solve all their problems for them, and then complain three years later how he's taking care of all these other people again.

That's codependency.

And I could kick, I really could kick, this therapist of his all over town for putting him in group therapy only after a measly eight weeks, and not insisting on ATTACKING THE CODEPENDENCY AND LOW SELF ESTEEM. Head on. With serious intensive work. BEFORE marital therapy!

Look how much work I've done in three years and look how sad this situation is.

Ai, ai, ai.

Anyway, don't end up like this. Check those links out, and avoid the below-average therapist.

Codependency and Low Self Worth--the Most Insidious, Toxic Relationship-Ender There Is

PAST

"HOW can I say that?" you ask. "I thought a lot of other things were way, wayyy worse. Like cheating. Or beating. Or porn addiction. Or any other kind of addiction. Anger management issues? A controlling personality? At least codependents don't do any of those!"

No, they don't. (At least, not in any overt, in-your face kind of way.) BUT...

Most of the time, a person whose spouse is straying will find out. If your spouse is an angry or controlling person, you're gonna figure that out within a year of marriage, I promise you. Addictive behavior, you're gonna see evidence of as soon as it gets bad enough. And most people being hit have no problem recognizing the fact.

With just about any other relationship problem you can name, it's going to show up on both people's radar pretty soon. Both people will recognize there is a problem. They may not know what to do, and they may struggle with it for years and years, but both people know there's a problem.

With codependency and low self esteem (and I'm always going to use those terms together because all codependents feel horrible about themselves), only one person knows about any problems, and that person either:

A.) Isn't talking, or

B.) Gets knocked down every time they try to talk. Then they feel bad about themselves and just shut up again and pretend everything is fine.

       [Then you get, A.) Isn't talking.]

When this dynamic starts, the relationship can go on LOOKING AS IF everything is fine for years

and years

                           and YEARS

                                                         AND YEARS.

ONE person knows things aren't fine. The codependent.

And that person isn't talking. That person is ACTING.

The codependent is secretly miserable, so codependency is already ruining their life. That's how it starts. Then, codependency ruins everybody else's life.

Because acting is fine if you're doing it professionally, on the stage or in movies or TV. It's when you play a role all the time in your life that it isn't healthy. It hurts to be other than who you are. And nobody can do it forever.

Why do codependents not talk? Why do they act and pretend rather than be themselves?

Because they have such low self esteem and such, SUCH low self worth, codependents can be sort of mousy little people, absolutely SURE they aren't lovable and no one would want them. Because they've been treated like shit in childhood by drug addicted, personality disordered, or otherwise sick/neglectful/emotionally unavailable parents. Or maybe someone else was sick in the home and the parents just had their hands full. Either way, the codependent child/now physical (but not emotional) adult, feels horrible inside just about ALL the time and will do anything, ANYTHING for the love they needed growing up.

Sad to say, this kind of person is VERY attractive to anyone with a NEED TO CONTROL.

If Rory's horoscope is to be believed, her need to control came from a punishing childhood with an authoritarian mother, during which all her emotions went permanently into hiding and she determined to marry somebody who wouldn't treat her like that. So she was looking for somebody with a weak ego whom one glare, one snarl would knock nicely into submission. Maybe not even consciously, but it's the truth. Also, there's a lot there about a deep lack of confidence. If a person like this can get their hooks into someone smart who will be amazingly successful in the world, and then control everything this person does...well, that person has it made, right?

Wrong. Because no human being can be remade into the image another human being needs or wants. The truth is going to come out...and it does, in the mind of the codependent. Who isn't talking.

In my case, I had the same deep lack of confidence. The rest of my control problems came from a mother who portrayed to everyone around her that if only they would treat her just so, she could feel okay.

When that mother is a borderline who's flying into terrifying rages on an almost daily basis, scaring the minor children in the household to death, those kids grow up highly motivated to "do something" to change, to control, to comfort the people around them into feeling better and acting better.

Put me and Rory together and you have two very controlling women. The difference between us is, Rory had a high functioning mother (capable, held a job in the community) and herself turned out low functioning (barely aware of emotions in self, let alone her significant other), and I had a low functioning mother (couldn't drive or even handle a checkbook until her mid-thirties, anxious and fearful, could not hold down a job and tried to make ME do most of the household chores) and I turned out high functioning (extremely self aware, and brave enough to be this brutally honest about myself.)

What do the two of us have in common? Chi. The extreme codependent, who acts, pretends, and won't talk. What does he act and pretend? Whatever is necessary so that people around him approve of him.

BECAUSE CODEPENDENTS BELIEVE THAT APPROVAL AND LOVE ARE THE SAME THING.

How could we ever believe otherwise? Because the only thing we ever got (and really, all three of us are codependent) was approval from our abusive parents, whenever they weren't on a rollercoaster borderline wave of intense negative emotion, stuck on a drinking binge, or otherwise able to notice us, and we did something that reflected well on them.

So, the codependent acts and pretends, acts and pretends, acts and pretends that everything's fine (because that's what gets approval from the people around him) for DECADES. Even though he himself knows that he isn't happy and that something is wrong.

During those decades, an awful lot of badness happens.

1.) Outsiders judge the home, the relationship, and the happiness of the people by what the codependent displays.

2.) Problems fester and fester, growing worse and worse, because the other person doesn't know what's wrong--doesn't even know that ANYTHING is wrong--so doesn't get a chance to understand anything or to correct anything. Even worse, the codependent, trying to make everyone else happy, lies to himself: We'll do it her way. I'm fine with it. Really! And displays specifically to the partner that something that's making the codependent feel bad is perfectly OK. So the partner innocently acts on what the codependent has displayed. Now a painful situation has been set up. And worse, the codependent may even blame the PARTNER later, when the codependent specifically told the partner it was OK!

3.) The codependent does ANYTHING to try to handle the upset feelings, B-U-T talk about them to anyone who can actually help. Chi used to clean compulsively, lose himself in reading or hobbies, and misuse Zen meditation in an effort to be "not unhappy." They're most honest with people they aren't close to, and most dishonest with people they're close to! And relationships are SUPPOSED to go the other way round.

I mean, look at this. Chi is more honest with me than he's ever been with anyone, and we haven't even seen each other's FACES in over two and a half years. What do you suppose a person like this is going to do if we were ever together? Shut down to me, trying to keep me in the room, and go be honest with someone peripheral again.

That's how affairs happen. Sure is how ours started.

4.) Because the codependent has architected so very, very well this beautiful (untrue) façade of "Everything's perfect!" and is able to do this so very skillfully for so very very long, if and when the codependent finally breaks the wall of silence and reaches out to someone close to the situation to share truthfully...often that person is shocked. People tend to believe what THEY saw, rather than what a person actually involved tells them is the truth. This is the reason so many incest victims come forward to a family member and aren't believed. "But your dad is a GREAT guy! I've known him for years! He would never do that! Why are you lying to me?"

People get so attached to what they SAW and what they BELIEVED that they NEED to believe it, and giving up the belief is too shocking, too terrifying. What if that little girl really IS being sexually abused? How will things change? Or maybe it's as simple as, "Chi and Rory, we love them. Such a lovely couple, such a lovely family. MY marriage is shit, but theirs is wonderful. *Sigh*"

So the codependent comes forward, finally, trembling and filled with trepidation, and gets greeted with SHOCK! "OMG, this can't be true!" Or they get pelted with the DUTY they OWE the other person. When it may be that that other person has been abusive or neglectful or hurtful for years, in ways the codependent can't even bring themselves to say because it's too personal. But...

5.) Codependents don't like or trust themselves. So they value the advice and opinions they get from others over their own feelings.

Go back up to A. up there and start all over again.

Because of these dynamics, codependency has absolutely GOT to be the WORST emotional problem that can operate in a marriage. Here I'm witness to a marriage that's been rotting from the inside for nearly FORTY YEARS.

When something like that is going on, two people can waste most of their lives before even getting properly introduced to what's actually been happening. Now the bad habits of controlling and not speaking up are severely ingrained, and lots and lots and lots of unspoken hurts have poisoned the well. And the same bad habits are working in overtime to keep all the problems going. AND the external pressure from people who don't understand (because things LOOKED so good for so long) is doing the same thing.

If it really is unsalvageable, now the people are old. They're in their late forties, their late fifties, their sixties...even their seventies. And their entire LIVES have been lost to a bad relationship.

Worse, should they ever find a better one, they're probably going to conduct themselves according to the SAME BAD HABITS they've practiced since childhood. "I'm no good. No one will ever love me. I'd better put my head down, play along, not talk, not upset anyone, and never make waves."

Codependency is a LIFE DESTROYER--quite possibly the worst one there is.

Because it always has such a pretty, pretty face on it.

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.

Nobody's Cryin', Nobody's Lyin', and Nobody's Dyin'.

PRESENT


Oh, my God, what a WEEK. I literally feel like I've been bound in front of a firing squad and riddled with bullets.

My eldest stepson. Ugh, ugh, ugh. I've been trying to settle Simon's estate matters, and this person has treated me like a criminal since day one, and I have done NOTHING to deserve it. I have done NOTHING TO this person! Ever!

And he communicates like a goddamned Neanderthal, and then he's angry when I can't read his mind.

And the things this person takes offense at. Jesus Fucking Christ! Apparently the normal way that most people hash out agreement and disagreement is completely foreign to this person.

But then, one needs to consider the source. Mom had a diagnosis of BPD (that's borderline personality disorder, not bipolar.) And we know that BP's often pair up with very controlling people. And, from several reports, Simon was a real asshole when he was younger, with a drinking AND a gambling problem. And there were a ton of arguments and fights. None of those three boys is 100% right. I wonder if the middle one, as detailed elsewhere on this blog, may have BPD himself. 

The oldest one, from all reports, is a long-term pothead who committed welfare fraud, moved into Simon's house and never paid rent so they almost lost it, then tore it all up. We could have been married two years earlier had Simon not had to move back there to remodel it. And the youngest one, well...grumpy, surly, depressed, sarcastic, and bitter. Has he ever had a date in his whole life? God knows.

The whole thing almost ended up in a lawsuit. Fortunately, it didn't, but it's all just taught me a little more about the tenacity of the blinders a bad childhood slaps over a person's ability to perceive reality, and to get their mind around the truth about another person's communication, no matter how desperately they're trying to get it across. And how easy it is to fall into a damnable repeating pattern; even though I had just been told (finally!) what upset the other person, I went right back and did the same thing anyway.

And I know who else had a bad childhood, and how tenacious those problems are, and that is really sobering.

Because that person hides, pretends, and lies. And ACTS, as skillfully as Robert DeNiro. If Chi doesn't want you to know something, you aren't going to know it. A relationship could wind up a long, long, LONG way down the wrong road before I ever had a clue.

And that is very scary.

I've realized my horoscopes are right. I am addicted to drama. 

All when I was younger, there was some BIG drama. 

One day I was gonna be a big, flashy success (or as much as you can be as a minor author, anyway) and prove to EVERYONE I WASN'T GOOD ENOUGH FOR that I didn't deserve how they acted toward me and how they treated me. I was gonna do well enough at something I loved so I didn't have to stay stuck in something I just wasn't good enough at and was unhappy and terrified doing. 

Then when I realized how unrealistic that was, at least I could marry the guy who was that good.

Then I realized how unrealistic that was.

But Simon was such a great guy to be with, that didn't matter. Then--surprise!--I was battling brain cancer with the best guy in the world. 

Then I was battling Rory and childhood demons with the other best guy in the world.

Then I got DUMPED. (Being brokenhearted sure is miserable, but it's also very dramatic.)

Now all I'm battling is Number One Stepson. And I TRULY hope we've seen the last of that...but I doubt it. Something tells me he's going to hate something in the new book contract, jeopardize the sale of the book, and we'll be at each other's throats all over again.

Drama, it turns out, is not all, "Wheee! I'm not going to have a boring, everyday life!" 

That was how I was as a kid and as a young person.

But actually, most times, drama is BAD. And most of the time, drama makes you feel TERRIBLE.

                                                     ***

Soon, there will be nothing particularly happy or exciting going on in my life, at all. Nobody I'm happy to come home to, or just thrilled to stay home and cook Sunday breakfast with. Nobody to swap writing pages with and dream. No belief that anything exciting is going to happen with my writing, or Simon's. Or mine and my writing partner's. Realistically, most books that are published don't sell shit. You have to sell at least 5,000 copies for a publisher to consider you as having done anything worthy of another book contract.

No more Battling To Save My Man. (In any sense of the phrase.)

And, please God, no more battling with Number One Stepson.

It's entirely possible that I'm going to spend the next thirty to forty years just going along and doing my work, and that will be it.

                                                      ***

You just have to live what life gives you. 

You're not going to be the "best" at anything, and even if you do, you're just going to die and it won't matter in the great cosmic scheme of things, anyhow. It's just not that important. Nothing is, when you think about it.

Two years and six days ago, Chi called me and left me. And I've had this sensation ever since then that I was in a race against time, struggling and struggling to grasp a number of things about it before a deadline, before something else that was going to happen.

And now I feel like I've gotten there. I've achieved all the knowledge from it that I was supposed to. 

I can poke around it some more, sure, and the astrology is fascinating, but there's no more feeling of urgency about it any more, like there's something I really need to know and I haven't found it yet. 

I'm done shoveling shit, I'm a very different person than I was when I started, and now it's just time to relax. To just go along doing my work, and that will be it.

I won't have a dramatic life any more, or even have anything much happen to me at all--except for getting old and dying.

                                                      ***

And I remind myself that there are VERY good things about that. 

I have a new saying about my new, getting old, getting bald, getting fat, solitary, little-old-lady, almost-fifty life: 

"Nobody's cryin', nobody's lyin', and nobody's dyin'."

All my young life, my mother was whinin' and cryin'. "So-and-so did this to me, and So-and-so did that to me."

"Oh, you poor baby," was the only way she knew to feel self-worth.

If somebody done her wrong, and you were telling her they were wrong and she was right, that was a safe way, and the only way she knew how, to feel the validation she needed. Always from other people, because she was abused as a child and still all tied up in it, 

and she still felt worthless.

I don't have that in my life any more. I had to cut that influence out a long, long time ago due to some unbelievable behavior. 

(I haven't missed that behavior one little bit.)


And Chi. Sweet, handsome, smart, sharp, funny, incredible Chi.

THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH HIM. NOTHING!

He is, always was, and forever and ever will be, a lovely, lovely person.


But, he was an abused child, 

and he still feels worthless.

And the only way he doesn't feel worthless is if he's making everybody else happy all the time.

And if that isn't making him happy, he stays all walled-off and fortressed-up, shutting everyone out of his reality, not letting anyone see the real Chi, unwilling to BE the real Chi, resentful and self-denigrating and telling himself he's unlovable, repulsive, and that Fate has it in for him (those, sadly, aren't my words)...

while hanging a beautiful mural outside the walls of his lonely little fortress so no one knows anything is wrong.
This is known as "smiling depression," by the way.

And "smiling depression" is one big lie. One big lie to the world about who you really are, and one big lie in your relationship about what's really true within it.

And if I'm with Chi, and I love him the way he really is, and his trust is the most precious thing I have...

He basically just shuts you out. Quietly, with no notice, and acting flawlessly as if nothing's changed. 

If you are Chi's relationship partner, one day, you are no longer his best friend. 

And he JUST DOESN'T TELL YOU.

You won't find out about it for TEN YEARS.  At LEAST!

And the whole point of my relationship with Simon, and my relationship with Chi, was that we were best friends, and we trusted each other, and I knew their real hearts. 

Simon would never have done this to me!

If Chi and I ever really were together, and he walled himself off and stopped sharing, and he basically just cut me out of his life and went on living in the same house with me and pretended like nothing was at all wrong...

I'D WANT TO DIE.

I really, really would. 

I'm not Rory. I'm no wicked witch with an attitude problem, to hide away from in the Fortress.

It's one thing if every time you stick your nose out of the Fortress, there's a wicked witch out there throwing lightning bolts at you. That would scare anybody back in. But I am not that wicked witch, and if I am hurling lightning bolts, it may be that there is something seriously wrong with me, or going on in my life. Maybe I need the support of the person I am with, not to be walled out and left while he's still living in the same house, giving an Oscar-worthy performance that nothing is wrong.

I don't know how I'd ever be with Chi, and not be absolutely terrified that he was walling me out like that--and turning in such a good acting performance that I'd think everything was okay, and never, ever know until ten years later when he wanted me to know.

That would be much, much too late.

My whole world would just shatter into pieces.

Simon would never have done that to me. He knew that I'm a good woman, and he trusted me.

That is one scary scenario. ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING.

Who wants that to happen to her? Especially after fifty.

At least if I'm alone from now on, I don't have to be afraid of that.

And brain cancer, well...

Life is peaceful now. Nobody's cryin', nobody's lyin', and nobody's dyin'.

There are good things about being alone.

                                                    ***

I just have to keep reminding myself of that, I suppose.