‘tfw your mind is a fortress, when you really just want it to be a home…’ - fb post, dec 2017
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saturn just moved into my rising sign, aries, and i can’t fight myself anymore, so, i won’t.
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i’ve been trying to write this post for over a month, so sorry about the inconsistencies with tense. time is weird. anyway. i’ve got three different documents and voice/notes, too, with ideas that all seem scattered, but are somehow related and i couldn’t figure out how until i realized,
it was me.
i’ve always had a hard time seeing myself clearly. i think i’m getting better at it though. i tried to put the notes in an order that makes sense, and doesn’t side-quest too much. either way, i’m glad i’ve been writing because…it helps. i don’t feel great about the craft of this post, but im trying not to let perfect be the enemy of done. thanks for reading.
a few weeks ago, i was talking to my father, who i am certain is the source of my choosiness about language (that man is definitely some kind of neurosomething), and what he said to me cracked open an understanding that i hadn’t been able to put words to (i hadn’t known i needed to, not consciously)…he called what i have experienced this past seven years ‘devastating’.
and he’s absolutely right. i don’t know if i would have named it if someone hadn’t done it for me. i’ve been experiencing the grief of someone who has been devastated - i keep imagining a building in demolition slowly descending, the cloud of dust pushing away from it - and i have not consistently or adequately been able to offer myself the consolation of my own skills or crafts. it may not have been enough anyway. some things are not meant to be done alone. i didn’t realize that either. not really.
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congruence is the idea of space between our real, ideal, and perceived selves. my perception of myself is always skewed, but one thing i do know is that my moral/ethical compass skews hard toward protection of others.
they say, ‘if you don’t like your life, change it’, and it’s empowering until you find yourself trying and trying and not really changing or only changing in ways that just hurt differently. then it just becomes proof that the common denominator is you.
- somewhere in my journal
i haven’t been practicing - doing guidance or healing sessions - because i haven’t felt able to healthily reflect others back to themselves. it’s important to have standards, and i needed to figure out what was happening with me without more responsibility. it felt awful. and some days taking care of myself didn’t feel good enough, a thing counter to learning to accept myself - my inner voice on loop…‘why am i all these things i hate? still? how am i so far displaced from my life?’
recently, though, something has begun to fall into place.
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i’m finally back in therapy, and we’re starting with acceptance. even before i got back into sessions, that was something i knew i needed to sort out, but i didn’t know how. some things are so deeply embedded from the way i built myself the first time, before the onset. the only other people who understand the way ‘acceptance’ sounds like ‘settling’, ‘failure’, or even ‘danger’ are people who are (or have been) as deeply traumatized and chronically ill as i am. other folks comment about ‘so being hard on myself’, as if i haven’t lived with my own high standards and their internal cacophony my whole conscious life. i haven’t known how not to be this way.
many people are familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. it’s usually formatted as a triangle, with basic needs like food and shelter at the bottom, and complex needs like intellectual and creative pursuits at the top. unsurprisingly, Maslow learned about perspectives on self-actualization from the Blackfoot people, but totally missed the point - where his theory is individualistic and hierarchical, their worldview and practice - a cycle - sees each person holistically as part of and necessary to the collective, and each child as an already fully actualized being.
after spending three years at home, there are selves awake in me that i haven’t known in a long time, some, ever. who of them to set free, to indulge, to devote all the time they should or could have had, to be and be and be? i have so much less to give and so much more to lose, but this, this is about everything.
i try to tell myself that each day is not about the rest of my life, but each day could be the rest of my life. everything matters. it always has. what if we cared about ourselves and each other with the vehemence that keeps us apart? the desire to do better, to be better, to help anyone that wants that for themselves, that is not something about myself that i want to wipe away because it’s ‘easier’. i do not know how to view it in a more balanced way. sometimes, i don’t want to.
still, i’ve been finding ways to balance letting it out so that i don’t become an echo chamber for all this anger and insistence turned inward, the constant sadness that only ebbs just to flow again. it turns out that when you find the right people, they aren’t scared of you, won’t get tired of you, will appreciate and respect your effort, even when you can’t understand why. and out of respect for them, maybe you have to have a little more regard for yourself. it’s just that simple. at least for me. i know the friendships i have right now are ones i am going to devote myself to for as long as they last.
i spent the transition from spring into summer putting out the bonfire that was my nervous system. there was a lot of laying on the floor in the dark, reading grandiose queer epic fantasy, walking around the neighborhood and watching the waves of flower blooms. lots of journaling. lots of crying. eventually less crying. more doing things i told myself i would do - making art, finishing books, starting to exercise again, cooking.
i’ve found that how i start the day makes a difference. i spent most of my life dissociating my way through my mornings until i ‘turned it on’. now, i journal, move, pray, sing. yes, cry, too. something to settle me into myself. on a hard day, being able to talk to, or even just be quiet with, someone who cares about me and understands that im struggling can make all the difference. i don’t have to hide or pretend and that safety pushes away the fear and anxiety. i think im getting better at asking for help, and maybe im teaching myself a new way to be.
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in some philosophies where reincarnation is an aspect of the cycle, it serves as a site of opportunity, a chance to learn universal lessons step by step. it’s why, in each lifetime, we notice themes and patterns, gifts and challenges, places where we get to practice a skill and level up, maybe even help some others along the way, too.
nothing that guides me - buddhism, islam, physics, spirit - allows me to believe that my life is an accident. that i was not offered this path for a reason, for better or for worse. i just do not know what it is, and while i am busy feeling simultaneously adrift and backed against a wall, people are suffering. people need support. there needs to be more beauty love connection in the world.
previous me did most of this alone. they pushed through and only asked for help when it was really bad. otherwise, they handled it and kept hustling. even though i don’t always know what it means, im determined to do things differently. not everyone gets a chance to rebuild a self and a life, and i want to do it well. i just have to remember, devastation is different for everyone. there’s no one way to ‘get it right’.
it’s been about a week since i compiled the previous part of this post.
it’s strange how many selves i become, how i sink and emerge, cycles of all sizes and colors. i observe the change constantly, and am beginning to understand how to accept myself, even when an aspect of that self is ‘storm’.
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although i’ve always loved astronomy - KidSeph had a telescope and a little planetarium projector - i only had a passing interest in astrology until my mid-twenties, when it became part of how i understood the rhythms of the universe. i started actively studying astrology in 2021, but it’s only now beginning to lift off the page and take shape in my mind. (shout out to the visual/kinesthetic learners)
i’ve been imagining my tropical chart (all saturn/mars/moon, big warrior/leadership/legacy/transformation/power energy) as a past life1, the me before the hard reboot of epilepsy, and my sidereal chart (all jupiter/venus/saturn, big expansion/imagination/abundance/beauty/connection energy) as my future2. if all mes exist simultaneously, the important thing is understanding which aspects of those selves will be able to love the me that exists in each now.3
yesterday, a friend asked me how my world is looking.
my very vivid, literal brain spun up the image of a rollercoaster, a reflection of the rapid recap it had done of the past two weeks. all the crying laughing praying thinking-about-doing-instead-of-doing conversations actual-doing ideas, finally, ideas. and so while my first thought might have been something about how rough it’s been, i side-quested, thought, ‘rollercoasters always come back up, don’t they?’ and immediately made the connection.
since then, the idea that im not ‘the kind of person who keeps having bad days’, im ‘the kind of person who keeps bouncing back from them’ has lit my heart up. it’s not an empty reassurance - it’s something i know to be true because i am here looking at myself. i feel proud for the first time in a long time, for a reason that matters.
Stay brave,
Seph
Tropical charts are based on the position of the sky 2025 years ago, and do figuratively reflect the sky of the past.
Sidereal charts are based on the current sky, and given that my sun (Aquarius) and rising (Pisces) are still in future-oriented signs…
One system or self is not better than the other. I find that each one reveals things that the other cannot see and also things that do not apply. Maybe acceptance is understanding that each one, each self, has things to offer, and also things that are not relevant yet/anymore.