Lucy Looking Upward

It’s been a very intense couple of weeks, in astrology as well as in life. As everyone knows by now (and if you don’t, take your head out from under the rock and put your gas mask on), last week Mars and Mercury both ingressed into cardinal signs (Cancer and Libra respectively), setting up a horrifically passive-aggressive T-square with Pluto, and Saturn and Uranus have been in an ongoing opposition that’s been exact twice already in the past several months and is going to be exact again on the 15th. If you didn’t exactly feel stuck before, don’t worry- this combo really tightens the vise. I feel like aspects such as these are hard to pin down as far as describing a mood in a way that will work for everyone. For some people, a simultaneous cardinal T-square and a Saturn-Uranus opposition could be a perfect opportunity to just take a step back and go do something else, but for others, it might feel like there’s absolutely nowhere to step, so all you can do is dwell. And then again, for some, maybe both might be true, and some kind of balance will have to- God willing- manifest.

As a rule, I’m not generally someone who looks for to-the-letter literal manifestations of astrology in my life all the time, but when they do occur, it still kind of throws me for a loop. Transiting Pluto has been in my 7th House for quite some time now, so I’d pretty much settled into that- but due to the T-square, it goes up against transiting Mars in the very last degrees of my 1st House, and the Saturn-Uranus opposition is in my (respectively) 4th-10th House axis. My general feeling right about now is that my independence has been utterly compromised. On the one hand, owing to transiting Mars in my 1st this summer, I’ve been able to make a lot of very proactive professional decisions in a very short space of time, which I’m very happy about. But at the same time, to make those possible, I also had to sacrifice a whole bunch of other things that I knew would directly threaten my personal boundaries.

I started school on Friday. It’s so weird to be back in school- so, so, so, SO weird, not only because I’m one of the few older students in some of my classes (if not the only one), but also because CUNY schools are absolutely nothing like where I went to college for my regular undergrad. CUNY feels a lot more like an extension of where I went to high school, truth be told. I think my actual classes are going to be great, and I’m there on a mission, so I don’t feel particularly hampered by the atmosphere. But still, it’s a strange adjustment to go from largely supporting yourself for the past few years in a pretty high-stress but still pretty unconventional industry to suddenly being without income in a developmental psychology class with kids who still snicker when they hear the words “oral” and “anal,” even in context of developmental psychology class. It’s part of what I wanted, so within that structure I’m positive I’ll do really well in all my classes and be able to carve out more time for the things I want to do, and that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time but wasn’t able to because of traveling for work and/or Chronic Fatigue. That’s not the part that worries me SO much.

The part that worries me SO much is the fact that taking a step forward also meant taking a step back, as far as my living situation. After agonizing over it for about a week, my friend Liz (Gayle to my Oprah) basically helped convince me that staying with my parents, at least for this non-matriculated year, would be the most sound decision- not just financially, but so that I could regain my health and work on some other psychological stuff I may have been avoiding. And at the time, I thought it was a really great idea too. But as the Saturn-Uranus opposition becomes more exact, a whole mess of family dramas (not all of which I want to discuss here) have started popping up every which way, and it’s really starting to stress me out, and I haven’t even been here two weeks.

A big part of the frustration (and the literal manifestation of transiting Saturn in the 4th House) is that there is physically not room for me in this house anymore. I haven’t lived here basically since I was eighteen, so I’ve pretty much outgrown my childhood room. I was trying to arrange things in here last week and in the middle of not knowing where to put anything, I happened to read Pat and Neith’s take on all this activity and I literally looked up to the heavens and shook my fist and growled, “SA-TURRRRRRRRRRRRRRNNNN!!!!!” I still haven’t managed to put anything in any semblance of order, but that’s standard issue for me. Soon I’ll be too busy to do it anyway, which is also standard issue for me, but will not sit well with my mother. (Instead of me discussing the also frighteningly literal manifestations of Saturn-Uranus in my 4th-10th Houses that have occurred within the last month and are really hitting hard pretty much since I moved in, you can go and read the entire canon of Western literature and use your imagination, and you’ll be covered.)

Part of the reason that I did agree to come back home was because I figured it would be a good exercise in boundary-setting. Which, thanks to Saturn, it is. But it’s also making me remember why there are certain things I would rather just not deal with. I mean, seriously- I thought the Clusterfuck of Doom was bad, but for the past few weeks, I’ve almost been using the Clusterfuck of Doom as my happy place. Especially given the nature of the therapy I’ve been doing, and how suddenly now that I’ve been home and all these other things are going on, I feel like I’ve once again had to stall my trauma recovery so I can cope with everything else happening all at once.

And it isn’t that I’m not trying to stay positive. It’s just hard to always be doing it all by yourself- especially when it’s not entirely your problem. (Oh my God, I can’t even get into it. I am so incredibly tired. My first class starts at 7 a.m. and my last one ends at 5 p.m. Why am I even still awake?)

The upside, I suppose, is that Saturn will be leaving my 4th House pretty soon, and that the Sun is there now. So maybe things will start to lighten up around here in some way. We can only hope.

In any event, the Clusterfuck of Doom finally feels safe. Who knew.