i never thought to ask the stars what they thought about my life goals.
in retrospect - if only i had taken that small amount of time to look up and say
okay, now what?
my life would have been so much easier.
but also less riddled with lessons and where is the fun in that, really?
about two and a half years ago, i sat across from a stout man in his apartment riddled with astrological memorabilia and a shag carpet and he pulled out a paper covered in graphs and numbers and motifs - my life from the beginning to the end - sprinkled on a piece of white paper. how simple it looked.
he explained that these designs, the cosmos, the rotation of the universe at the exact time of my birth laid the path for all that was to follow.
in fact,
the stars laughed - almost cruelly - when i inquired about education in the of fall 2014
nope, they said.
try again!
fall 2015 would be my year, yes. and don't get too complacent because your education will require you to move.
well, alright. who am i but a mere mortal to question the divine word of the stars?
just when i thought he and i would dabble around what the cosmos have to say to me, he dove in. head first and strong.
knocked me right on my ars, quite frankly, when he said
the last three years - they were hard, weren't they? lots of loss, lots of pain, a lot of struggle.
he proceeded to paint a vivid picture of what it feels like to lose people you are not prepared to lose and how fragile a grieving heart becomes. but he hit a very real nerve when he said
you wanted to leave. right? get in your car. take your things. and leave
every now and again, i listen to the recording.
i hear the pain in my voice - the hesitation, the hard gulp, the barely breathable
yes
because god damnit if it was not the most bold form of the truth. pain hurts. i wanted it gone and the only way to dispose of it was to walk away from it. as tempting as it was, it was not an option. i knew i had to stay. i knew i had to get comfortable with the pain and i knew i had to find a way to make it mine. it controlled me for months. probably years. a constant battle of push and pull. of can i just get through today, please? and the tip-toeing of maybe yes and maybe no.
and then just like that - on a crisp october day - it was gone. it left me. i was not the same person i once was - i was slightly hardened but alive. breathing. new.
of course the cosmos knew. they aligned it just so. he explained that when i came out - when the torrential cosmo downpour relented - how i was fundamentally the same person but new in soul.
how i would do things i have always done but they felt different. it felt like i was doing it for the first time.
how true it all was. and how finally someone had put into words the feeling of rebirth i felt when i would grab a handful of spinach to toss in the blender and pause for a moment and think
have i done this before?
the texture of the spinach felt different against my finger tips and the sensation of the leaves grazing my skin as i dropped it into the blender below tickled an emotion that was long ago dead.
and then it was gone. fleeting. but it was those moments that assured me that i was alive again.
he told me i would be leaving to travel and the stars permitted it. they also willed me to work like a dog and budget to make it happen. they knew it was necessary. they knew it was needed. they knew it was my time. and, i strongly suspect, they had a little something to do with the random email that showed up in my inbox on a hard day of budgeting saying
hey, you want a job?
and it was more money and more hours i had come across in years.
hell yeah, i do!
and that is why, certain moments of my trip
the emptiness of the sienna streets on a dew-filled morning
standing in front of the cathedral of all cathedrals
my breath stolen by beauty
and me - quiet, pensive, intrigued by every twist, curl and dip of the marble adorning the sacred place
i would be moved to tears, literally.
my heart would swell, my eyes would fill and i would want to cry softly
as if the stars were saying
this is it. this is exactly where we willed you. this is where you need to be right here and now.
we're sorry you had to stay where you were before but you understand that it had to be that way, don't you, lovely?
and the truth is
one more honest, from the core, barely breatheable
yes.
