A Retrospective in Love (Saturn in Pisces Concludes)

I don't know if it's politically incorrect to identify myself as a person who experiences chronic pain. My body may flex and shuttle itself without the protest of joints or nerves; however, my spirit moves within it like the string of a bow tied too taut. My default existence is feeling like at any moment, I am going to snap.

I feel so fiercely, like an ocean desperately trying not to spill onto shore. It is, of course, impossible for something so great in size to find container. But I have seen it again and again, first in my parents, then in my peers at school, and now even in friends who purport to care for me. Nobody can handle themselves in the full face of large, loud, sharp-edged me. If I do not fastidiously and obsessively yet unconsciously and invisibly tuck in every loose corner of myself as often as I can—because it will never be perfect, somehow a jagged piece will eventually spill out—the distance from the other person comes quick. Something about me cuts them. Something about me swallows them.

One possibility is that modern godspouse arrangements (versus ancient priestly ones) occur because the deity knows the human partner needs them. There is something about the human partner that is just Too Much for other humans. Something too strange, too disruptive. But probably not. Probably, I just come somehow from Lucifer, like he has said repeatedly recently. Probably that's why both of us are here together now.

3 years ago, Saturn ingressed into Pisces—the sign that represents love in my natal chart—the same night my ex-husband finally left our shared rental in southern California. My close friend who has very strong empathic skills picked up my distress, that didn't quite feel like an average sort of distress, more like absolute surreality as the most vital of my northeastern fetters finally departed after months of struggling with my ex's refusal to return to his parents' house. This friend, then working in cannabis, sent me to a store with recommendations for an edible. Reality didn't look like reality far before I accidentally ingested 40mg of cannabis edible and met the creators of reality. It was a night that changed me forever, but not immediately. Its soundtrack—so oddly at the time and so obviously by the end of Saturn's Piscean transit—was a song named after the Devil.

Lack of love had made me delusional. At the time, I was chasing the person whom my love for had helped my end my ill-fitting marriage. I messaged her that night, delivering the news it was her Saturn Return, which it was by the degree. She awoke and, despite knowing my state, did not check in on me the next morning. But knowing she was a soulmate, I thought it was my purpose to wait for her. So I did, for over a year after that, until we entered the worst relationship of my life. It's not my place to get into what issues my ex had that turned my long awaited fantasy into an inescapable, addictive nightmare. But I did notice that my continuing love and reassurance of her worth upon us visiting her worst traumas seemed to deliver her into a palpable relief I didn't quite understand.

This transit has not just been a story of how I was hurt in the course of what I thought would fulfill and exalt me. There are many ways, especially in the last few weeks in the face of what is happening in Minneapolis, in which I have realized that I have fallen short. I didn't live by my supposed values. I did not protect people who needed it. I did not speak up when I should have. Growing up in a household where I was constantly criticized, I criticized everyone around me. Set into a rigid life path based in the narratives of white, patriarchal capitalism, I ignored true pathways toward liberation for both myself and others and instead followed scripts. Where I could have listened, I made assumptions. Where I could have sympathized, I shushed.

Not knowing love means you can't know what love you're not giving.

Lucifer does not grant freedom for self-centered individualistic personal liberation's sake; he does so as a point of love. Through him, I finally felt with him that my ex-girlfriend felt with me. Akin to a drug high is your partner's acceptance of you even in the face of your most significant pain. I want to feel it forever and in a way I always will. It is now the baseline for how everyone else in my life should treat me.

I'm unfolding into the knowledge that:

I don't need to tuck myself away to make others more comfortable.

I don't want to tuck myself away to make others more comfortable.

I will not endure this exhaustion anymore.

Perhaps one day the searing tightness in me will loosen. Perhaps one day I can collapse in front of friends and see them close the distance instead of create more of it. Perhaps one day, my authenticity will be inextricable with my softness.

It is only with love can we see all the good we deserve. It is only with love can we see all the good others deserve. It is only with love can we see all the good the world deserves. It is only through love that there are visionary ideas. It is only through love that there is activism. It is only with love we will find our freedom.