Illustration, "Phoenix," by Carol Burkhart
Brand New Day
......DAY 1. Again. It seems like every day I am starting over again; I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere. There are no signposts on this journey, and my headlights seem to have gone out. My first report was full of optimistic metaphors and unfailing positivity. I'm afraid I may have been blowing sunshine up your ass.
......Here we are a month into the future, and everything is going on like they always had when there was a one in front of our year. Sometimes I feel a subtle shift, but it's always out of the corner of my eye. Right now I can only see the effects of the night when the past and the future engaged in a fire-eyed staring contest.
......As the grand planetary collision occurred this New Year's Eve, the first waft of pungent reality came creeping up my nostrils and wrapped itself around my unsuspecting mind. Up until then, I was feelin' groovy. I was ready to surf through this key life transit on a magic carpet, as though this wasn't going to affect me like everyone else; I have the invisible Chiron shield, you see. Um, no. Reality always manages to get underfoot and wraps itself around my ankles like a cat every time I begin to feel like I am above the human experience.
......This particular karmic sonic boom knocked me down in the middle of my grand entrance to the big New Year celebration. My emotionally abusive ex-boyfriend, with whom I have to share my circle of friends and so maintain civility, decided to pick a fight with me when I declared a boundary. I chose to ignore him while he chased me around the house insulting me, instead of turning around and spewing forth all of the cruelties written in secret code in the old handbook of our relationship. But I can't find an atomic clue as to whether I made the right choice. My ego was battered, but willing to fight to the death for the right to declare the high road taken; I didn't want to argue with him because I didn't want to walk over this big cosmic threshold that way. But then again, there was this other voice, tiny but echoing, chastising me, saying that I just ran away again, that I should have released the yoke from my chest and danced lightly through the door with the weight of that pain suffocating me no more.
......And then later nothing within me could come to terms with the cognitive dissonance I felt when he came to make peace and I just let go of it, hugged him, and offered him the first drink from my champagne. In my imagination I am Xena, and I kick ass when someone steps on my honor. In the real world, none of the warrior screams ever make it out of my mouth, and I am a gentle, gracious, living, breathing CARPET. On the bright side, not so long ago I never would have declared a boundary in the first place.
......Later I learned that as the confrontation took place Mars and the Moon were conjunct and two-stepping out of the7th house and over the horizon, urging on my blind and desperate fury toward one I had trusted and who had hurt me with intent. By the time we made gelatinous peace, Jupiter and Saturn had joined the 7th house party and locked eyes from across the signs. Jupiter said, "let it go", and Saturn finally breathed, and went off to find the bathroom.But wait, there's more.
......As if I hadn't already been knocked on my iridescent behind, high heels in the air, the best friend of a boyfriend from my teenage years came barreling out of the buried past an into this same party. More old memories to confront. This was the boyfriend who came with me to my grandfather's funeral and talked me into smoking dope instead of being with my family and working through my feelings. This was the boyfriend who lost the little cross pendant my grandparents gave me for my first communion. He was behind the greatest trouble I was ever in as a teenager. He brought me from the gooey edges of the high school drug culture into the liquid center, where we drowned ourselves in pot and acid together to escape the pain and frustration of being half-grown. Throughout our relationship he stood squarely between my family and me, and every healing opportunity we had when I was with him was lost. It took a long time to reconcile some of those issues with my family; I didn't mourn for my grandfather until my daughter was born, almost six years later. And here was his best friend, after all this time, dredging all these memories up from the bottom of the river of my consciousness. Dragging up all the embarrassment I felt for being a stupid, selfish, inconsiderate, scared and lonely kid caught in the threshold of adulthood, but still very much a child. Guilt tastes strange with champagne, I shoulda had the chocolate.
......When I considered this transit in the house of relationships, I assumed it meant current ones. I've been nervously monitoring my marriage like it's some kind of nuclear reactor that I don't trust not to overheat and explode, even though it looks nothing like a nuclear reactor and acts more like a hot spring. I never even remotely considered that it could refer to the fossil records of my prior relationships, and that the explosion I need to watch for is the one that occurs from exposing the gaseous past to the fiery future. I didn't even notice that it had been leaking all this time until the undeniable effects of the synthesis knocked me to the ground.
......Yes, I know; I have changed a whole lot. No, I am not even vaguely the person I was at either of those junctions. But to have to confront myself in those larval stages of my being and look at what ugly little half-formed creatures they were, even wrapped in the protective coating of their potential, is embarrassing. That means I have to admit I'm not perfect again, no matter how much I want everyone, including and especially me, to think that I am.
......Perhaps instead of being my armor, Chiron strips the heavy robes of condemnation that keep me gripping the banks. It's hard to go with the flow when you're clinging desperately to a mossy branch, which is whipping the submerged part of you repeatedly against the rocks. Maybe to be able to let go I need to forgive myself for being an ignorant kid. Maybe I need to let those psychic wounds that I dig fresh every day start to heal and scar over. Perhaps my newfound compassion would make as good a salve on myself as it does when I apply it to everyone else. But that would mean that I would have to react to conflicts and frustrations as they are now, not as representatives from the past. Can I do that? What will I be if I'm not a martyr? Is the circle of love and trust in a relationship completed by love and trust in oneself?
......The water is calling me, I want to feel it wash the blood off my skin. I want to hear my breath echo in my ears as I lay back and watch the sky move by. I want to let go, but my hands are aching and frozen stiff from gripping tightly the cold, slippery branch for so long. It must be time soon; I don't know how much longer I can hold on.++E-mail Maya | Part One of this series