Lucy Looking Upward

I’m highly in the thick of this shoot, and I have to say, I am positively shattered. It is fascinating and exciting, but truthfully, I have never worked this hard on a shoot in my life. Rather, it’s not even that the work is so different from anything else I’ve ever done, but the hours have been brutal. Today I reached what a younger me would hope will be the pinnacle of my fatigue, but unfortunately, this is not my first rodeo, so I know I just have to take what rest I can and push through. The Pisces Balsamic Moon is not helping, as it’s been slobbering all over my natal Sun and Mercury all day, so I basically want to do nothing but sleep. I am so off my game today. And I look like I’m off my meds too, let it be said. There is no reason why anyone except an extra in Requiem for a Dream should look like I do right now at my age. The worst part is it’s the result of THREE FREAKING DAYS.

Being a Moon-exactly-conjunct-Ascendant in Gemini, I have fully embraced the fact that I never shut off and I need constant stimulation, which is why I am often not surprised to find myself on shoots listening to the actuality and taking notes in one ear, listening to The Ramones in the other ear, doing a crossword puzzle, eating a sandwich, and Gchatting with my friend all at the same time and still not missing a single beat. But what I didn’t so much realize- or rather, what I’m cruelly coming to see right in front of me- is that a Moon on your Ascendant can also make you look like Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? if unchecked. Which in my case is bad, because in Gemini, I rely on those two to pass for a high school student. When I am at my relaxed and prettiest, it is my meal ticket. Sometimes I am charged the student rate at movies without even being asked for a school ID. When I’m in a stressful situation among strangers, everyone switches from nasty to nurturing in a second if I wail, “I’m only fifteen years old!” Once, despite having visibly gigantic tits, I even got called “little lady” at a restaurant and given a free dessert. Literally- my meal ticket. But if my stress levels stay where they are now, it will not be long before I am charged the senior citizen rate at movies without even being asked for a Social Security card. Or asked for my coupons at restaurants. This shit scares me, like Dorian Gray.

The Moon rules the changeable tides of your emotions, but she also rules all the unfortunate byproducts of the changeable tides of your emotions, like your body issues; further still, in her association with The Mother, well- up to a point, The Mother and The Body are kind of one and the same thing for pretty much everyone on the entire planet. I guess it wouldn’t always translate this way for everyone, but in my case, the Moon on my Ascendant makes me ultra-demonstrative with my emotions, ultra-body-conscious, and it also smashes the two together such that my emotions are totally evident in my body, in a kind of a gross way.

Truth be told, to say that I’m just body-conscious is a huge understatement. Without toppling legions of skeletons onto you all at once, let’s just say that I have been highly unsatisfied with my body image for a long time, and I have come around tremendously in recent years to rest at a “tentative acceptance” level, which is a vast improvement from a “wanting to rip myself in half and jump out” level. I have treated my body in very destructive ways, and at times I still do- notably, times of highest stress, much like the one I’m currently in. I catch myself binge-or-stress-eating on set, and then I feel bad about it, like everyone knows that’s what I was doing. And while I know that nobody really cares, the oversensitive Pisces and Gemini parts of me are very aware of something- probably everyone else’s personal anxiety about God knows what else, maybe even their own eating patterns- and I take it all in. And I allow it to let me eat another Munchkin. This would all be fine, if I could do it gracefully. When I am this sleep-and-time-deprived, not to mention tangled up in wires and walkie-talkies and transmitters, I can’t justify binge-or-stress-eating when I catch my reflection and I’m like AAAAAAAAUUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHH.

I think the Moon on my Ascendant makes it so that all my stress is evident in my body, not just in my mannerisms or whatever. I look the way I do right now because it’s reflecting my nerves and my mental state and everything. I am sickeningly envious of my female colleagues who are working twice as hard as I am and still look amazingly beautiful right now. One of them I know for a fact is a Virgo with a Leo Ascendant and an Aquarius Moon. How I would kill for that. Truly, I would- I have noticed that the amount of destructive and scary thoughts I have increase proportionate to how fat I happen to be at the time. I don’t like feeling uncomfortable in my body, largely due to the fact that my discomfort can be so easily detected in how tired and worn out I look when I get stressed, or how bloated and disgusting I feel.

The feelings are old news. The planetary mind-body connection is new news. I guess all I can do about it is- well, try to ride through my stress in a less disgusting and self-harming way, and/or just make provisions to mask it better. Like the shower I am about to take, which will be hours and hours and hours long. And all the wonderful-sounding detoxes I am researching for when this shoot is over (for which suggestions are also welcome). And drinking up the last several hours of the Pisces Moon. In bed. And, as also befits Pisces, very likely with alcohol too.