The title actually comes from a recent search term that showed up on my stats page. I thought it was just perfect, and you’ll soon understand why.
I’m positive I’m not the only one who feels that this has been a very tough month. Not just because “April is the cruelest month.” (Thanks, T.S. Eliot.) A LOT of shit went down in the past couple of weeks, and it’s left a lot of people feeling really raw. The culmination of all the retrogrades and Chiron’s ingress into Pisces pulls up a lot of old wounds, of things you thought you were done with a long time ago, and makes them relevant again. The challenge is not just to understand and accept why they’ve become relevant again, but to deal with them in a different way so that next time (because inevitably, there will be a next time) they don’t hurt as bad. That’s definitely been the case with me, and more so because some of the biggest events have hit my natal chart really closely and really hard, some in painfully predictable ways and some in ways I simply wasn’t expecting, but all related to the same theme. And I don’t know which is worse.
First, there was Pluto’s retrograde. I don’t remember what exactly I was looking for, but on that exact date I looked at my natal chart and made a really harrowing discovery- transiting Vesta had just gone direct on my IC, turning my Miss Julie Complex into a grand fixed cross. (For those unfamiliar, that’s a T-square between Venus and Pallas Athena in Aquarius on my MC with Mars in Scorpio on one side and Chiron and Juno in Taurus on the other side.) The Miss Julie Complex has been the bane of my existence for a long time, so to have something there, anything there, was kind of a jolt. And Pluto is still in my 7th House on my natal Neptune, but thanks to a recent reading from Marina of Funk Astrology I discovered that there is a reason I felt so affected by transiting Pluto- because my natal Neptune actually makes a T-square with my Osculating Black Moon Lilith and my asteroid Lilith, which transiting Pluto is piggybacking on. Then transiting Mercury first opposed my natal Pluto, and when it went retrograde on the 17th, it was opposing my natal Saturn, so you can imagine the kinds of conversations and arguments and misunderstandings I’ve been having all month. FUN. And then there’s Saturn’s return to Virgo- this we knew about, but on Monday Saturn and Uranus exactly opposed one another again, reallyreallyreally close to my natal Sun and Mercury, which they had done previously on November 8, 2008, on February 5, 2009, and on September 15, 2009- so all the issues from those dates flared up again as if they’d never gone away.
That’s a lot. But what does all this mean?
Well, first of all, it means being butthurt and getting frustrated enough to cry. (And I do. Trust me.) Second of all, it reinforces the difficulty I have with seemingly incompatible nuances of my personality. Per Marina’s reading, my T-square between Neptune, Osculating Black Moon Lilith and asteroid Lilith is hugely creative and spiritual, and insanely romantic, seeking some kind of otherworldly love that most humans can’t possibly measure up to. If I let myself admit it, it’s true, I do want that. This idea sits nicely in my Miss Julie Complex with Chiron and Juno, which are enfolded deep in my 12th House, and with good reason- I know I have a lot of baggage around what I expect a “normal” relationship should be, and I’ve learned that the kind of love I eventually want will either take A LOT of doing, or will simply be impossible. The thing is, most people who also desire spiritual otherworldly enduring love conflate that with total lack of boundaries and space, with possessiveness, and with totally unrealistic expectations. That is not what I want. (I mean, after all, I have Venus in Aquarius at the top of my chart. I do actually know the difference between “romantic” and “stalker,” and most things that make other women go “Awwww!” make me go “Ewwww!”) But that is what I get when I put out inklings of what it is that I really want, because many people just can’t tell the difference. So most of the time, I don’t get what it is I actually want. Or I only THINK that I am, because it’s either so fleeting, or literally just someone pretending or being insincere. And it’s massively, massively frustrating.
Recalling the dates of the previous Saturn-Uranus oppositions, they were all periods in which this imbalance was pretty pronounced and causing a great deal of stress in my life. In November of 2008, I’d just been dumped on by Guy #682,496 who had acted all clingy and doe-eyed and romantic but was actually using me to cheat on his girlfriend, so that had me feeling pretty low. In February of last year, I was super-excited about The Philosopher (God, I haven’t typed those words in AGES, isn’t that freeing?), but it wouldn’t be long before I realized I was the only one in that relationship, so that sucked. And this past September, I decided, “I’m in school now, I’m working towards a goal, I’m not going to be with ANYONE, I can be an automaton and I’m FINE with that.” Until I wasn’t. That sucked as well. None of these situations work for me. So I’m realizing, via transit, that something has to adjust.
It’s hard to adjust, though, when my perception of myself in relationships is so fixed- literally, a grand fixed fucking cross. And also, when transiting Saturn falls in your 5th House, it’s not so easy to just pursue your own pleasure. The consequences of those pursuits loom really heavy in the not-so-far-off distance. Since transiting Saturn has been in my 5th House, I’ve been in a few situations that would involve taking huge sexual risks- but every time, the cartoon angel on my right shoulder pops up and says, “But Lucy, what is this TEACHING you? How is this CONSTRUCTIVE?” What should be a house of wild abandon (especially at my age) becomes a house of sobriety. Which ISN’T FUN. OR HELPFUL. AND MAKES ME HATE MYSELF.
I’m always harping on internal locus of control, and how I am extremely opposed to the idea that we can’t affect our own destinies, even with knowledge of astrology. While I certainly believe that I do spend a lot of time trying to control my own life (perhaps an inordinate amount of time, even), I often find myself upset that some of the same things keep “happening” to me- that I don’t proactively make a point to derail a compulsive pattern even as I can see it playing out. So I’m not going to do that anymore. It’s going to be really difficult, and a lot of work, and not always fun. But it will be better than always feeling disappointed, or being made to feel like my needs and desires are weird.
There are a few ways I have been going about correcting this problem, and ultimately attempting to connect better to my needs and integrate what society would like to have me think are totally disparate sides of myself. (If you are the TMI police, you may want to leave now.)
1) Sex with myself. Yes, that’s right. Double-clicking the mouse. Because if it’s true that I’m not going to find exactly what it is that I want in a person right away, it’s not going to help my self-esteem to moan about there not being anyone. But it makes sense. I’m the only one who really knows what it is I need right now, so I shouldn’t deprive myself or wait for someone else to do it. If there is one thing I legitimately hate about myself (legitimately!) it’s that I’ve become so resourceful in so many areas of my life- particularly professionally- but I always have to wait for someone else to validate me, that I can’t even fucking admit that I look pretty most of the time. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
2) Sex with people who actually WANT to have sex with me. Sounds like a no-brainer, right? It’s actually not. A lot of people I’ve been involved with only have sex because they think they’re supposed to, that it makes them normal, not because they really want to. After years of “this makes me normal” sex, it is actually kind of a really mind-blowing experience to have “let’s fucking DO THIS” sex. (To wit: D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Different kind of heroine, not like Miss Julie, who I will write about one day, but not here, not yet.)
3) Being frank about this. I’ve been having an e-mail exchange with Stephanie Gailing recently about some of the subtleties of Vesta. We are both unsatisfied with the currently accepted notion of Vesta as relating to “sacred sexuality” and “service,” both terms that are kind of hegemonic, and we think it could go a little further than that. We also acknowledge that since we both have pretty Pisces-and-Neptune-heavy charts, we conflate the idea of “service” with “total psychic and emotional self-immolation.” (We also want to open the discussion up to people who may have different relationships to the asteroid, because seriously, we’re curious.) But with transiting Vesta activating my Miss Julie Complex the way it is, I do see an opportunity for “service.” As I said above, I strongly doubt that I am the only woman who struggles with merging romantic ideals with independence, or with what she wants vs. what she’s been made to think she wants. And as much as the details of my own sex life are private (and I do plan to keep it that way, I’m not about to turn into The Washingtonienne), the discussion about reconciling seemingly contradictory needs and desires and establishing boundaries while still having your needs met, especially for women, needs to be very public.
Quite a post for a Full Moon day, huh?
Although fittingly, I actually do feel much better getting it written down, instead of just stewing in it and making myself miserable. I hope you do too, vicariously. How has this month treated you?
