Hold the Bar; Thread the Needle

FUTURE...

Now that I'm getting a few more hits than I used to, I find myself getting hit, literally. With pejoratives.

I shouldn't feel surprised by this. 

Most people, unless they are monks or nuns and will never have a romantic partner, are terrified and enraged by the very thought or mention of that horrific eight letter word, cheating.

They're thinking about themselves and how hurt, how destroyed they would be if it happened to them, how ruined their lives would be, and how much they would hate the parties responsible. And some would drag in the name of God. A sacred vow, you're going to hell. All that.

Anyone participating in cheating, therefore, is branded with The Scarlet Letter and heaped with scorn. Hit with words. 

And I understand the sentiment. Once upon a time, I worked in a place where the owners, married, were having problems. He took up with his assistant, who was in her early twenties and looked like Kate Winslet, only thinner. 

I was very angry, bitter, and judgmental. I had heard that the wife was an alcoholic, but I just didn't have any direct experience with that until the husband left the business, taking his girlfriend with him, and filed for divorce. Then the alcoholic wife started bouncing my paychecks and drunk-dialing employees late at night.

Very soon I figured out exactly what the man was dealing with, and how wrong it was of me to judge. He married the girlfriend, they started their own business together, she nursed him through cancer, and they have two beautiful kids.

I say this to make three points: One, unless you are VERY close to the marriage, and I mean VERY close, YOU DO NOT SEE THE TRUTH EXPERIENCED BY THE TWO PEOPLE IN THE MARRIAGE. Often, people are taking great pains to hide that from you. So, although you know full well how YOU would feel in the situation, you don't know anything about their situation at all. 

The last time I ran into the two people in question, I apologized to them for how I'd acted. I really didn't understand, and I really had no idea. And my behavior had just made a bad situation worse. And now others are behaving the same way to me. (On the Facebook page for this blog, not here.)

Two, simplistic moral answers, even though in most or all cases they may be essentially right, don't really help. All they do is slap people's hands and say, "It's bad. Don't do it." They don't do one thing to resolve the problems that are driving people to do it, any more than slapping cake out of someone's hand is going to force them to lose a hundred pounds. The problems are much deeper than that, and to heal the problems, you need deep understanding.

And, three, once you HAVE that deep understanding, you don't have the urge to perform the problem behavior anymore. IT GOES AWAY ON ITS OWN, once the necessary learning around the issue has been achieved. 

To that end, I'm going to discuss that deep understanding I've arrived at here. 

It's taken me almost three years to get here. I think it's pretty valuable. 

When Chi dumped me to enter marriage counseling, one thing he said to me was that I had set the bar high for what he should be able to expect in an intimate relationship...and never had, in this marriage.

And so I did. I set the bar high for Rory.

And then I spent the next three years setting the bar higher for myself. I had unresolved childhood problems and issues I was trying to rope Chi into fixing my feelings about. Rory did the same thing, and I detested her for it; so where exactly did I get off?

But there was one person I never raised the bar for.

Yeah, that guy.

A few months back, when I was receiving many astrological indications that Chi would come back into my life, and I really needed to be considering what the right thing was to do and how I would handle it, I realized that the range of acceptable behavior, behavior that wouldn't absolutely torpedo the lives of all three of us, would probably fit through the eye of a needle.

But I love Chi. So, the only thing to do is hold the bar up high, and thread the needle.

You see, each person is allowed and should have the freedom to be with whom they choose, especially in a situation where mean, unacceptable, hurtful behavior is occurring. I mean, look at this. We look at countries like India where arranged marriage is the norm, and we're shocked. Parents should never choose who their child is going to live with in marriage! And yet we believe it's perfectly okay when an adult child wants to choose for the parent who they should be with in holy matrimony, or when it's we ourselves who think we know what that person should do. Why do we think that's okay?

But people cannot choose a healthy relationship consistently when they are unhealthy emotionally. 

And that's the case here. That's why we got into this mess in the first place. Rory, Chi, me...all unhealthy emotionally. 

I've WORKED MY ASS OFF to get better, even studied astrology in order to do it. 

I'm sorry to say that I have not noticed similar efforts or progress on the part of the other two corners in my triangle.

Rory may never change. It's one of those situations where a person is inflicting pain on someone else, but feels fine themselves. Why should they change? They're not unhappy. They're fine. It's the other person who has the problem, what's wrong with them?

But, Chi. Ah, Chi. I've known Chi twenty years now, and he's been wrenchingly miserable every single year I've known him.

There's only one cure for this: Codependency recovery. Emotional HEALTH.

In the previous entry, I discuss the astrological signs that Chi CAN do this work, and that this year could be a banner year for him to do so. I've always wondered what the hell to make of all the clues I've uncovered these past three years: 

1.) A big split in his transits starting right about now, between those that reflect a person working in therapy and healing and getting well, and spending the rest of his life much happier and healthier, and those that reflect a person who makes no progress, makes the same mistakes over and over, torpedoes his next relationship, and dies alone and shattered.

2.) My transits, which call me addicted to power and control and warn me repeatedly not to reenter The Bermuda Triangle with these two.

3.) Our Davison, which states that one of us makes a sacrifice for the other one, and that the relationship can be healthy if and only if I heal from emotional problems and am completely capable of living all alone.

Well, after the work I did in the previous blog, the last piece of the puzzle has fallen into place and it all makes sense. I was confused, because it appeared that perhaps Chi simply isn't capable of working in therapy and getting well AT ALL. So what was I to make of all this conflicting stuff I was reading? 

Now, it's very clear: Chi CAN get much, much better, but he's scared of the work and doesn't want to do it, and he keeps getting sidetracked running off to nursemaid anyone else in the northern hemisphere who's having problems they can in any way rope or guilt him into prioritizing above his own.

If I offer him a way out--an opportunity to have an affair with me INSTEAD of doing the work to heal from ACoA issues in therapy--that's what he does instead. And the time in the life this happens is now. If I'm correct, his progressed sun by both methods should be sextile to his natal sun. Checking the charts, it is. 

One degree per year of the life. A sextile is sixty degrees, and this is Chi's sixtieth year. Right on the money. 

I was supposed to kick him into therapy and walk away, risking that I'd never see him again. If I'm not strong enough to do that, I get him in the end, after seven painful years of horrible angsting and back-and-forthing, but he hasn't gotten any better and our relationship is horrible, just a repeat of Chi's and Rory's in a different key. 

Chi may just decide to live with what he has, and through therapy find his way to living with his marriage in serenity the way it is, so he can keep the ties with other family that he values. Or he may leave after all, and I may see him again. 

But it's HIS choice, not mine, and it has to made AFTER progress in therapy, NOT before, with a healthy heart and not a sick one.

And if I'm too scared to lose him, I panic and start to pull him back to me again. I try to fight for him, and I, the person who came in to inspire him to go to therapy and heal, end up being the very person who destroys the therapeutic progress she came here to initiate. It's pretty clear: I don't know what happens if I walk away and don't have the affair, but if I do have the affair I absolutely destroy any chance Chi has of ever getting well...and now I know, he does have one.

And fuck knows, I of all people understand that there's NOTHING more important than doing your work in therapy and healing and getting well.

There's only one choice here. You can moralize all you want about God and about "hurting the wife," but this wife made her own bed. All she does in lie in it, and she doesn't even want to change the sheets. It's her choice to heal and do better in her marriage, or not. 

But nobody who professes to love anyone, could or would destroy that person's one chance to recover from lifelong emotional problems because she's too selfish and too scared to let go of him. And I started out thinking I'd be helping by hanging on! Clinging, directing, trying to live someone else's life for him, instead of letting go to allow that person to find his own competence.

So, the course is clear. 

Hold the bar, thread the needle, and say goodbye.

I may never see him again, but I'll know I did the best thing for everyone. 

If I fuck THIS up, shoot me!

FUTURE...

A note: this post got so long I'm going to have to break it in two. If you know anything about astrology it may be of interest. But I'm starting to know enough to get technical, so if you aren't interested, you may want to skip this post and just wait for the next one.

This post is more the technical, Here's what I  discovered, and the next one is, And here's what that means.


So, if you've stopped by here on any occasion, you know that, in addition to extensive reading about ACoA issues, relationships, and all manner of adult relationship problems stemming from wounding by abusive parenting in childhood, I have also used astrology to help me figure out the issues surrounding this affair situation. It certainly helped point out to me, my own childhood wounding issues I wasn't even aware of.

Of course, one is drawn to the predictive branch of astrology, the claim made by the discipline to be able to forecast future events. I have already accurately done this three times, and I'm just a student; so of course that whets my appetite to discover: How does this actually turn out? 

Almost three years ago, when all this started, I was quite the starry-eyed ingenue. I knew Chi was my Second Guy On The White Horse, and I wanted it to end Happily Ever After. (With him taking care of me in these and those ways, and me taking care of him in those and these ways. Let's hear it! "I love you, you love me, stuck in codependency!") 

I would  have been utterly heartbroken forever and ever more if it didn't turn out that way. In fact, that was how I got onto the astrology in the first place--tripping over the transits that showed him coming back, then leaving, then coming back again, and us having a HORRIBLE life. ("Aauugh! No! NO!")

I'm proud to be able to say now that no matter how Chi ends up choosing to structure his life: If he is wholly and truly at peace with it, I am wholly and truly at peace with it. 

Even if it means I never see him again. 

Which doesn't mean I'm still not curious whether or not this guy is ever going to be happy, with anyone. Or in just giving up on the marriage and staying in the family for the kids and grandkids and just making his peace with it for real (because he sure isn't now.) I'd hate to think he's just going to be miserable forever. Is there any way he's ever going to avert that miserable fate?

Turns out there is, and for those who know anything about relationships and solving relationship problems, it should come as no surprise: Both people need to be emotionally healthy. Or, at least, emotionally healthy enough to work honestly together in good faith. Or, if giving up on a marriage and just accepting it the way it is for the rest of his life, a person has to be emotionally healthy enough to actually make and accept that compromise. 

So the real question is, Can this person ever achieve livable emotional health?

So, here, I putter around the charts hunting for that. 

I mean, look at this. Chi is nearing sixty, and he's been hideously, hideously codependent his whole entire LIFE. We won't even mention the inhumanly low self-esteem issue. 

What are the chances--?

In predictive astrology, the rules go as follows: You have to evaluate "natal promise" in the chart. If the chart you were born with does not contain the potential for you to be, do, or have something, it's not gonna happen, no matter what transits or progressions you get to that chart.

Then comes "progressions."  In "progressions," a planet moves so many degrees for each year of your life. There are different systems for deciding how fast the planets move. Most of them give you essentially the same thing, except for slow-moving planets like Uranus and Pluto. Some astrologers prefer the use of "secondary progressions" for these, and some prefer a method known as "solar arc."

I, however, digress. Progressions are said to reflect (NOT determine!) changes that are happening within the psyche of the person.  Then there are your transits, that is, where planets are now compared to where they are in the chart you were born under. Transits are said to reflect events from an outside source. (Again, reflect, not determine.)

In order for an event to occur, you need at the very least the natal promise for it, AND a strongly impacted progression. (Which makes sense, if you think about it. If you have no acting talent you will never be a movie star, and if you don't have the desire to do so you most likely never will, either.) In the majority of cases, you need a transit as well--at least one outside event, to make the natal promise happen. (If you don't get discovered by an agent, or make yourself known in a modeling career first, or get that first big part, your career on the big screen won't happen.) Makes sense, right?

So now, I'm combing through Chi's chart. At the ripe old age of almost sixty, critically ill with the DISEASE of codependency his whole entire life, is there any natal promise whatsoever, combined with the inner readiness and some outer event, that will push this guy to a.) WORK FOR, and b.) ACHIEVE, wellness??

I've known the relevant transits for a long time. Those are pretty easy to get...you can buy a report of those, whether you have any clue how it was calculated or why. I've had those in my possession for a while now. 

The transits are there for both hard work, great personal growth, and VERY good progress...and for, um, avoiding hard work, zero personal growth, no progress at all, and utter, utter DISASTER in his next relationship, whoever it's with. Unfortunately, reflected in my charts and in Rory's, that utter disaster appears to be with ME, and it appears to begin...oh, in another month or so?

THAT is fucking SCARY.

Especially since EVERYTHING in the transits, from November 2014 right up to October of this year, HAS COME TRUE ALREADY. In my chart, in Chi's chart, and in Rory's.

(Did I ever tell you I predicted the date of Simon's death using astrology? I was one week off.) 

Well...nice to see those good ones, but how the fuck do we get those and not the disaster?? I've been wondering that for ages now, and that was why I started learning on my own. I want to understand this stuff for myself.

I learned enough to figure out how to do progressions. In doing predictive astrology, you start there, since any natal promise in the chart not being activated by a progression is likely to be dormant for the period of time you are looking at. So: What in his progressions holds any promise at all for actual progress recovering from codependency and low self-worth? 

Right now he has the Sun on his natal Saturn, which is of note because his natal Saturn forms the following, which sounds just like Chi:

"Saturn Aspects
Saturn rules our conditioning or the way we were taught and brought up in the world. It is associated with restriction and limitation, but with this it brings structure and meaning to the world and our lives. It reminds us of our boundaries, responsibilities and commitments. It is often associated with a father or authority figures. Saturn's lessons actually help us to grow. In your chart the position of Saturn reveals your limitations, fears and sense of responsibility.

Saturn Opposition Midheaven

This can be a difficult placement, indicating that you feel so lonely and so different from others that it is hard to relate to them. Also you may sometimes feel that there is nothing inside you, that if others could look at you they would see only emptiness. This belief is not based on fact, but it can seem very real when you are feeling unhappy. It indicates that you need a great deal of emotional support from your family. Your mother, especially, and possibly your father as well, may demand a great deal and expect you to live up to very high standards, without giving you very much emotional reinforcement. Even if they do support you, you will not feel the helpful effects as much as others would. One possible effect of this placement is that you will be very active socially, almost as if you could not stand to be by yourself, even though you feel alone when you are with others as well. This is an especially likely effect if your chart has many planets above the horizon. You are trying to escape from your sense of inadequacy through others. However, the only way that you can conquer this feeling is by going inside, confronting yourself and accepting what you are. You prefer to keep your immediate personal surroundings - your room, and, later on, your home - neat, with as few obstacles as possible. Others may think that your tastes are rather stark and ascetic, but you prefer not to have to contend with any more material possessions than necessary.  

Fortunately, anything Saturn can go much, much better with dedication and hard work. All my difficult Saturn aspects have become much better with therapy and the kind of research and thinking I am doing here, and this one is weaker than all of mine, so I have to take this as an indicator that with the right work, progress can be made. The Sun here tends to reflect, from what I've read, a desire to work and manifest results.

Natal promise and a good progression! Whew!
Another one: 

Moon opposite Uranus in the natal chart gives an exciting but unstable home and family life. These and other unusual domestic conditions are outward manifestations of your highly strung and erratic emotional life.
Regardless of what your conscious intent may be, your feelings and reactions control the direction of your life. This is especially so for your close relationships. Your intimate relationships are where this aspect is most noticeable.
Uranus creates emotional distance which makes it difficult to form close bonds with other people. This detachment will cause, or is caused by, your strongly independent and freedom loving nature.
One of your parents, usually your mother, may have reinforced this inborn independent streak. Depending on other aspects and fixed stars, Uranus in your childhood could manifest as a scientific, astrologer, angry, abusive, crazy or absent parent. Whether a good or bad example, they influenced how you relate to people at the emotional level.
An inability to make meaningful and stable relationships is common while you remain unaware of the erratic impact Uranus (please note: Uranus here is a SYMBOL for something, not the actual determinant of the situation. In my opinion, Uranus here symbolizes codependency and low self esteem.) has on your subconscious feelings and reactions. Emotional turmoil, dramatic change and unexpected events can affect your home, family and close relationships.
The key to reducing the unsettling impact of this aspect on your private life is to gain conscious awareness. Massive breakthroughs and personal growth can come through astrology, psychology and medicine.
To enjoy more stability and control over your emotions and reactions, you want to slow down and calm down. The aim is to quieten your impulsive, erratic and unexplainable emotional reactions.
Like so much in your life, compromise is needed to find the right balance between boredom and excitement. You cannot be the mad genius and the caring emotional partner at the same time.

I ask you, does that sound familiar or not? Fortunately, this one apparently responds well to, *ahem*, active WORK in therapy. Two progressions are activating this one: a Jupiter square and a direct hit by Chiron, the wounded healer. Look that up in Greek mythology. This is where "Chi" gets his pseudonym.

Computed by the solar arc method, Chi's North Node (signifying the goals the soul has for this lifetime) is sitting right on Saturn--seems significant to me--putting the solar arc nodal axis right on top of the MC/IC axis. That's a big activation of the natal promise to make some progress, here. And...well, will you look at this? Solar arc Saturn is sitting right on the natal Moon, activating the above Moon opp Uranus, which describes a lot of Chi's issues and good natal promise of making some progress with them. Saturn reflects that a lot of restrictions, trouble, and delay will happen, but if you work with them you can get some major things accomplished.

And, oh, look at this: Solar arc Mercury sitting on Saturn. This also activates Saturn opp Midheaven, reflecting heavy and often depressing thinking that seems to be needed around some serious and challenging mental work. But serious discussion, thinking, and goal-setting can lead to useful outcomes.

So, it would appear that Chi's got the transits, the progressions, and the natal promise to do some good, hard, lasting work on codependency, ACoA issues, and low self-worth THIS YEAR COMING UP.

And let us not forget: Chi has Pluto in 12. Pluto is the planet of deep, scary transformations that require us to confront the deep things we're afraid of. House 12 is the hidden house, the house of self-undoing. Any planet found in 12 will find its influence challenged in the person's life. So, Chi is going to have a very difficult time going within and making changes to parts of himself and influences in his life. However, those with Pluto in 12, should they make that transformation, can end up very deeply wise in the area they initially had difficulties with, and the chart DOES confer the ability to do this if the person will knuckle down and WORK. House 12 is the house of the subconscious, so with Pluto here there's definite potential to heal.

Thank fuck.

I was really beginning to worry.
 

Comfortable Inertia and the Chronic Poor Doer

Recent Past...

For the week or so after Richard's outburst and sudden storm-out, I had this very odd sensation I felt unaccustomed to.

That heaviness, that sadness, that despair, that constantconstant knowledge that I am all alone and that this is veryvery bad...

WAS GONE.

Wow. I just felt so much lighter. I just felt so much freer. I just felt so much happier.

Of course, Chi's first two messages to me really helped. First he Facebooked me, "I hope you're doing well." I sent that back to him. For all I knew, he'd seen all these music videos I posted when I was in a sad mood, and he was messaging from a happy marriage, out of concern that I was just imploding. For all I knew, I was going to hear, "I'm so sorry. But Rory and I found each other again, and we're perfect now, and this was just what we needed to impact that to happen and I'm so sorry it had the side effect of inadvertently destroying you."

But the next words, "I miss talking to you," set me free.

Nobody writes that to an ex-affair partner if they have a family they're motivated to save and a spouse they can actually talk to.

I was right. Everything I thought about it the night he broke it off with me was right, everything I had ferreted out since was right, and I had read the charts and predicted correctly (with major help from Alice.)

I WASN'T CRAZY.

"You're better off by yourself," and "You're not nuts." Those messages from the Universe do wonders for one's state of mind.

I got to spend a week or so in that state while waiting to see if anything else would shake out.

And I discovered that I'd be okay if nothing else did.

Far better to know this and just go on alone than get caught in a stable triangle that wrecks all three parties involved. Far better to know this and just go on, than to wrench someone out of a marriage when he isn't ready, enter a relationship with someone emotionally crippled from that experience, and have it end in the disastrous way that's foretold in all our worst transits. When we're seventy-one and eighty-one.

No, clearly, just being reassured that I can make it alone and that I'm not nuts, and moving on with my life would be infinitely preferable.

Not that I wanted to leave Chi in the dust, if he were capable of getting out of that nightmare of a marriage and healing enough to become functional in his relationships. THAT Chi is my ideal guy. I love Chi no matter what, but if a person can't function in an intimate relationship, only he can alter that fact, and hurtling forward to your doom because you still love the guy won't change a bad ending.

If he won't do better, he won't do better. Period. Living with my mother for thirty-eight years has shown me quite vividly that there's nothing worse than trying to live with a chronic poor doer...except, quite possibly, for being a chronic poor doer.

In veterinary medicine, a "chronic poor doer" is that animal out of the herd who just stands around, shabby-coated, thin, miserable, underweight, and sickly, while all the other horses or calves or goats or what have you around it are fat and sleek and glossy.

I see some good signs. He knows he's still miserable. He knows he isn't being treated well. He's still in therapy. He's reacting to his misery by trying to find a way out. And it was HIS idea to break contact for a while in order to think about what we talked about and discuss it in his therapy group. And he's sticking to that. I haven't heard from him since.  Also: He knows he mislead me last time, and he apologized for that. (And I apologized to him--I did have plenty to apologize to him for.) He's being careful not to mislead me again about what he is and isn't capable of. 

I've got to give credit where credit is due. Those are good. Those are good prognostic indicators. However--

--There are still some troubling signs that he may just continue to be, a chronic poor doer.

I understand that he's had a health issue which would keep anyone from cracking a book in the past year or so. But this person hasn't cracked a book in his entire life except the one assigned by the marriage counselor. Nothing on relationships. Nothing on codependency. Nothing on healthy boundaries, nothing on low self esteem. Nothing on being an ACoA. This person doesn't keep a journal. And this therapy group is not encouraging any of the above.

This therapy group isn't actively encouraging learning and work. This therapy group is not actively encouraging progress. It sounds, from what I heard, like a place that allows a person to just come in and complain about a situation, if that's all they want to do.

While I don't go so far as to encourage everyone to become an astrologer in order to solve personal and relationship problems--that may very well be overkill on my part--I am no chronic poor doer, and I DO keep a journal and seek out information to read. 

I understand that healing from childhood wounding by sick, alcoholic, codependent, and/or mentally ill parents is not a spectator sport.


I also noticed other signs in our few conversations.

It's subtle, but this guy really misses me.

He really, really, really, really, really, really misses me.

What he's suffering from is that lack of deep companionship, that deep partner intimate relationship in his life. These are the things he's never had. These are the things he's never had.

Rory isn't able to change to fit that, and she doesn't seem interested in trying any harder. She just wants him being there doing whatever he's being there doing, and I've written about that here in the past.

And he came back to me to find what he's missing, describing this huge void I left in his life. He's very subtle, but I'm starting to know him well enough to hear the signs in his voice that he's REALLY unhappy.

Only...

He's trying to find it by weaseling himself back into club activities he left to work on the marriage. Subtly, but he is. So he can see me every two weeks and talk to me once in a while.

And that's ALL he was planning to do to try to find what he's missing.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

1.) If we have to see each other every two weeks, and we still love and long for one another, how long are we going to be able to stand THAT? First we're going to end up talking in each other's cars after the meetings...then we're going to end up going to lunch (which he already asked me to do)...and then...and then...

Well, you KNOW what comes "and then."

2.) If his stated intention is not to leave the marriage, seeing each other in ANY capacity is NOT going to go anywhere. So...we're going to stare across the table at each other every two weeks for how long? And how is that going to affect our ability to forget this and move on in our lives? Is the deprivation of a normal life for each of us when we inevitably find that we can't, a good thing?

(Can I hear a big, resounding NO?)

3.) And speaking of a normal life. Basically, so that others in the family do not get angry with him and he doesn't have to endure criticism from anyone else, or upset anyone else's idea that life is perfect for everyone the way things are, he's going to restrict his intimate relationship life to a few crumbs of companionship from me for a couple of hours every two weeks.

A few crumbs under the table, when everyone else gets to find a healthy partner relationship of their very own and enjoy a full meal every day that they live? (If they CHOOSE to do their own growth and recovery work rather than stagnate in that relationship, that is.)

When Chi and I first got together, he told me a very personal dream that he had. I'm not going to share it here. But I had to ask myself if this proposed state of affairs would get him any closer to that dream.

Look how unsatisfactory all that is.

Would I be winning a gold medal here to aid and abet this in any way?

*cue Lt. Commander Data* "No, Geordi, I would not."

Which is why I had to say no.

It's my job, and I will continue to do that job.

It may very well be that he can just choose to stay where he is, be content with being that center of his family, and find serenity and peace. And if so, the way I find serenity and peace is not by hanging on, but by letting the dreams we had die and moving on to the next place in my life.

And if it's true that he cannot choose to stay where he is and find serenity and peace, I do not assist him in getting to a place where he CAN find serenity and peace, by enabling him to use tiny crumbs of companionship from me to make that situation j-u-u-u-st bearable enough that he can j-u-u-ust stand it, and is therefore unmotivated to change or grow any more.

And because I've DONE all that hard work lo, these past two years that Anne Ortelee came on here and lambasted me for, NOW I can see all this and NOW I have the strength to carry that out.

What we are seeing here, ladies and gentlemen, is the inevitable inertia of the human spirit when faced with a daunting (and bloody painful) amount of hard work and personal change.

Change is HARD.

I, however, do not ask any more of Chi--or of YOU, dear reader--than that of which I am capable, and which I have actually accomplished, myself.

Don't stagnate in your life and become a chronic poor doer.

GO DO IT. Go do your goddamned work. Go RECOVER from your goddamned childhood wounding issues so you can actually have a loving, functional partnership in your life before you motherfucking DIE.

Nobody's getting any younger.