Lucy Looking Upward

So as you may know, a week ago Thursday Neptune went retrograde. If you didn’t know, that’s totally fitting, as a Neptune retrograde is akin to being chloroformed. Neptune by itself is confusing enough, but Neptune going backwards is double-confusing; because the foggy nature of Neptune becomes internalized, it can cloud your objectivity and you REALLY can’t make head or tail of what’s going on. Of course, it’s different for everyone. Some people might use a Neptune retrograde as an opportunity to make really interesting introspective artwork, or devote some more time to prayer or meditation. Or, if you’re me, you might use a Neptune retrograde to make really stupid decisions and feel like a twisted-up  mess inside. In fact, that’s part of why I’ve waited so long to update again- not out of laziness, but out of real confusion and frustration. It’s like I know what I want to say, but I’m having hesitations about whether it’s too much information or how I can actually get it out without tons of backstory or rationalization, or even in some cases fearing judgment.

In general, in most situations, I feel I am nothing if not resilient. Even though it’s patently obvious when I am not happy about something, I will still for the most part push through whatever situation I am in to finish it, and make sure that the source of my discomfort is not detracting from what I need to accomplish. Then when it’s over, I can deal with my feelings in whatever way I have to, and in time, they abate and disappear, and I gain perspective and I’m fine. That is how it’s always been, that is how I know it works, and that is how I have been able to prove to myself that I am stronger than I will often admit. And that is, in general, what I feel I have been doing for the past few months where the situation with The Philosopher is concerned, despite having Neptune and Jupiter over my Venus-Pallas Athena conjunct MC. But unlike all the other times, it hasn’t been working, and Neptune retrograde confirmed that.

Starting the night of Neptune’s retrograde station, I’ve been feeling inexplicably uncomfortable. That exact night, I slept with someone else for the first time since the break-up, someone I had just met. In my younger days (read: like two years ago) I went through a spate of having a lot of one-night stands and feeling terrible afterward because I really expected something more to come from them. This guy was very clear about his intentions, and I knew full well what I was getting myself into, so I still had my dignity about me in that regard. The discomfort came with the fact that he was someone else, that ultimately it just felt so weird and wrong that I completely froze up in a way I normally don’t, and as such had to pretend I didn’t exactly know what I was doing, which was in turn (I’m pretty sure) confusing for him. When I left I wasn’t sure what was stranger for me, the fact that I had just been with someone else on its own, or the fact that I had just been with someone else and I did not care. But ultimately, I didn’t agonize over it too much, I will probably never see him again, and I ended up having much bigger fish to fry this week.

Since returning home from my last shoot a few weeks ago, I’ve found myself at different points feeling strangely ill in a way I can’t pinpoint, which I’ve mostly been attributing to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. The only way I can really describe it is just a dull, listless, sick pain. But this kind of thing worries me. I have an extremely hectic, stressful, erratic life. I am very young, and I would like to think that my overall health is fine, but I don’t want to get too complacent for fear that one night I will wake up to find myself going into cardiac arrest or my appendix rupturing. These things happen.

Long story short, late Wednesday night I found myself feeling incredibly sick and actually in a lot of pain, but because it was so late and because I couldn’t even really figure out what was wrong, I couldn’t call anyone, and I couldn’t really do anything for myself except lay there and weather it out and try to sleep. And then it occurred to me: “Is this going to become normal for the rest of my life? If I wake up screaming from a nightmare or sick in the middle of the night, will there ever be someone there for me, or will I just have to lay here alone, weathering it out?” And with that thought, cue the biggest panic attack I have had in months. I cried for hours, until I looked up and it was light out, and even then I couldn’t stop. I can’t even begin to make sense of all the thousands of thoughts that just totally overwhelmed me, but in the best bullet points I can manage, here they are:

• I realized what being in love is, for me. Being in love is when you have so much admiration and respect for someone and all that they do, when they’re absolutely beyond you in ways that you have to look up to them- but as soon as they get sad or sick or suddenly feel small, you just want to hold them and take care of them and zap the pain away, so in the morning it all just feels like a nightmare that’s gone.
• With that in mind, I am still in love with The Philosopher. I truly am. Despite how he treated me, there is so much that I still want to do for him- but I know he’ll never let me, because he doesn’t understand. He never believed that my feelings for him were genuine, and even when I thought I’d convinced him, he just didn’t want them. So I continue to carry the biggest, brightest, heaviest torch for him, months later, and there’s nothing, literally NOTHING, I can do about it. I’ve made no contact with him since our last conversation, and the way he is, if I made any further effort to reach out to him, even if all I said was “Hi” or “Happy birthday” or “Somebody’s hacked into your Facebook and that message from you is a virus,” ANYTHING, he would see it as Fatal Attraction-level stalking and just berate me for how crazy I am.
• He doesn’t want me, and when it came down to it he never really liked anything about me. He didn’t like what I do for a living, he didn’t like my body, my interests, or even stupid little details like the fact that I didn’t keep my room as impeccably neat as his or that for a while I didn’t have a bedside lamp. I was nothing but a temporary distraction for him, and I told him that. He said that’s not true but he hasn’t given me any evidence to the contrary. He didn’t care that I held him while he cried and I was fine with it. Most girls wouldn’t be.
• Does anyone want what I have to give? Because honestly, I’m giving out what I want from someone else, and I’m pretty resigned to not ever getting it in return. But I still want to give it.
• If I don’t meet anyone who can truly love me back and wants what I have, one day my parents won’t be around and I really will wake up screaming and hurt and I will probably die that way.

Everyone in my life who is aware of my feelings cannot understand why I still care so much about him when they say I can run circles around him and he’s an idiot for not even realizing what he had. Incredibly enough, everyone in my life, feeling this way about him is not something that I’m willfully doing just to be difficult or annoy you guys. It doesn’t make any sense to me either, but it’s there, and I have to deal with it, and considering how slow-moving Neptune is, I’m going to be dealing with it for a long time. And I don’t think that working more or trying to go on more dates or trying to get back into exercising or any other kind of Neptunian “-holism” is going to STOP it.

Ultimately I am glad that I wrote all this, but I’m still extremely confused, not to mention incredibly sad. But at least I am being honest. I am not sure if I want something really wonderful to happen to me, or something really horrible to happen to me- I don’t know which would affect him more if he found out. I am not sure if I want to try to be more of what he would probably want, or less of what he would probably want. I am not sure if I am wasting my time when I try to dress nicely and look pretty.

Brevity is not the soul of Neptune. My insides feel like dry ice. I need to watch I Spit On Your Grave to feel normal again.