By Maria Padhila
This is what Isaac promised me the other day — and no laughing! The ongoing disruption of putting our place together after the flood this summer (yes, it really has taken this long) is almost over, and he promised me that when I finished moving the last of the books, we could bring in a cleaning team to give everything a going-over. But he mixed his metaphors in a way even our daughter found hilarious.
I don’t care — I think I like it his way even better. I picture a surrealist sex-imagery painting of a giant carrot hovering at the entrance of a vine-covered railway tunnel.
I have my fill of carrots, but I’m still not seeing the light. I’m no longer in denial that my workplace is toxic. A rash covering my body, joint pain, pins and needles in my hands and feet, stomach problems — I’m like one of those badly-drawn cartoons on those cheesy Internet ads for “The American Parasite.” That’s bullshit, by the way — there are parasites everywhere, and we actually might be better off if we had a few. What’s hitting me is more likely an allergy, which is the immune system operating far too effectively, and attacking oneself.
No, I’m infected with the real American Parasite: work. Work the way many of us do it: too long, no breaks, no breathing, no connections. Work where you don’t see much in the way of results or satisfaction. Working for the Man. It makes us sick: hypertension, diabetes, COPD, strokes.
But I had a hand-to-forehead moment when I realized what was going on: Saturn just moved into my 6th house: health, work, service. I really, really hate Saturn right now. He is just a DICK. And not the good kind. I used Serennu, an amazing astrology look-up service Eric has recommended, to check out the Saturn numbers. I’ll also advise that when you’re being hit with a bunch of seemingly inexplicable issues from all sides, it’s a good time not only to check out your chart but to get an outside perspective, maybe from a session with Eric or Len Wallick or one of the other writers on this site.
So I don’t like Saturn, and the 6th house is a big yawn to me, but guess how the last Saturn in the 6th went down in my life? Nearly to the day it entered the 6th, I had a sudden, life-threatening illness that hit me on my way home from my brand-new job — just one day into it. I had pulled over into a mall parking lot and opened the car door, but I couldn’t get out. I just sort of leaned onto the pavement. I thought I was screaming for help but really just sort of half-croaking, and if it hadn’t been for a woman on her way to the fabric store seeing me and calling for help, I could have died.
Over the duration of Saturn in the 6th, I had some of the toughest jobs ever, including one where 20-hour shifts were normal, as well as three surgeries. Good times! My present circumstances look fairly pleasant by comparison.
And the carrot at the end of that tunnel? When Saturn went into the 7th, I got a Capricorn — an extraordinarily tall, handsome, funny man. OK, maybe I don’t hate Saturn so much after all. Because I certainly love Capricorns.
I also started getting promoted and getting more opportunities. All the time I put in at the sweatshop served me well. It’s not that it was a happy ending, but it was good enough. A carrot is not a croissant, but it’s better than a radish.
I think what’s most painful about the prospect of this transit — and what I intuited — was that there won’t be that kind of potential for progress. No matter how much work and effort I put in at this point, I’m unlikely to go much further in my quasi-career; I’m of an age where they’d rather try to ease me out and truly, there aren’t that many opportunities. Even if they were, I couldn’t be the kind of good soldier I have in the past. My heart and mind aren’t in it. From the trumped-up wars to the pipelines to the propaganda machines, it’s hard to find anything decent out there. I know people want work and need it desperately — but what’s out there is pretty poisonous.
While I was trying to make some sense of this, failing, and having hysterical freakouts about my worthlessness and incompetence, how was the family doing? Did being poly make any difference to weathering a rough time? I can tell you that there were a few occasions where Isaac or Chris would say, in effect (or Isaac, in just that many words): OK, you take her. Isaac would ask if I was going to see Chris that day, and then smile: Good. He can handle the crazy today. I know they say trying polyamory is not to be done while under stress or duress, but I wouldn’t blame certain mid-lifers if it looked pretty tempting for just this reason. It can be extremely tough being someone else’s Everything.
It has been a big load off my mind to relax that requirement. Not only do I not have to be anyone else’s Everything, but I’m free of the expectation that someone else should be mine. This doesn’t mean that I’ve fallen into that new poly place where you decide your different lovers should all ‘cover’ different parts of your life, or that they’re a bunch of pieces of a person that add up to a whole. I’ve seen this kind of thinking labeled both “Frankenlover” and the Chinese Restaurant approach: one from column a, one from column b, and pretty soon you have a full meal. No way. That kind of thing reduces the whole complexity of a person into a collection of a few interchangeable modules. Yuck.
No, what I mean is that Isaac or Chris or anyone else can be Everything — a full, complex person — but no one has to be my Everything. We each can be Everything, and be our own Everythings.
While I was moving and unpacking books, I found an old journal from around the time of that handsome Capricorn. I had opened it to a page full of ranting about things like how I felt like his pet bohemian and how I was losing patience with all the time and energy spent on his precious and perfectly proper New England family, and many more terrible grievances of this sort. The list could have been in any book detailing the qualities of the Capricorn. Reading my complaints, I could only smile, because the whole list put me in mind of Chris.
The things I used to find annoying, back when I expected a partner to be my Everything, are now qualities I can find charming and adorable. If another person has the freedom to be who they are, instead of who I need them to be, love and simple enjoyment of them as a person can grow to fill that space.
I know I’ve read many who fear having more than one partner could result in them feeling terribly insecure. What I’ve found is that it makes me feel more secure in myself. The people around me can shift and change. But I’ll still be me — Saturn-ridden, itching, overworked, me.
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