This past year has been really, really hard.
The other day I made a list of everything I've gone through since January and by the end I couldn't help but just laugh at it all and wonder how I'm not more fucked up. Every single conceivable part of my life is wildly different now than it was then, some for the better, some for the worse. But all of it - or so I keep having to tell myself - for the greater good. I guess I'm being vague here because a lot of it is still very sensitive, and also because as I've gotten older I find myself less and less inclined to want to share the explicit details of personal life publicly. (Aside from right here, right now, clearly.)
I 'gave up' blogging a couple of years ago because the medium no longer served me, and had actually begun to do the complete opposite of what I'd set out to do. Instead of it being a tool for empowerment and a safe intimate place to muse upon my greatest dreams and stories, it became a house full of rooms I could not fill, with a queue of people outside waiting to have a look.
But here I am again, many years and many stories on. I never stopped writing, I just stopped writing to be read. I don't know if this is a good idea to do so now, and to be honest, I don't really know who I'm even talking to anymore. I've long since disabled and hidden all previous comments on this blog as an act of self-preservation, a way to stop succumbing again to the need to be seen and heard to feel validated.
That's not why I'm here. I'm here because I've just had a really fucking mad year, and for some reason after all this time, I've just found myself compelled to return here and write it down. I can allow myself that, I think. I don't need to explain it anymore.
Fun fact about one of the recent changes in my life; I've developed a pretty intense and mostly unironic fascination with astrology and tarot. (Coming from the girl who once scathingly tweeted 'imagine being one of those people who blames all their life problems on mercury retrograde' - oh to be young!)
It's a free and highly accessible daily ritual for me that just does as much as the almost certainly overpriced private therapy I had for many weeks over summer, so WHY NOT. I just stick on a video of a softly-spoken youtube mystic who tells me I've been through a lot but ultimately I'm gonna be okay, and I'll be damned if that sugar pill doesn't taste just as good as the real thing.
It was through these videos that I came to understand that today is a special day. 11:11 is often referenced in spiritual circles as a 'magic number', and you can only IMAGINE how magic the 11th day of the 11th month is. Not only this, but for this particular 11/11 it's a full moon, symbolic of release and renewal, and, (oh boy, you guessed it!) that little pesky bastard mercury is in his full retrogradian glory.
This morning, the very morning of 11/11, I put one of these videos on in the background as I usually do, and whilst idly half-listening, one particular thing this person said jumped out and grabbed me by the throat. 'If you've found yourself having a particularly hard time recently,' she said, 'It's the universe telling you there's things you simply cannot bring with you into the new decade.'
Now, I know that's not really true. But what I can tell you, is that was the first thing I'd heard in days that managed to penetrate this swampy layer of depression which had settled over me like a think winter fog. And that's the damn truth. I went for a walk, mulling the sentiment over in mind.
And I decided to make another list. This time, of just everything. A full bulletpoint list of everything I've done in the last 10 years, starting from my impossibly naive 17 year-old self about to make her first important life decisions and basically fucking everything up from there on out. And my god was it illuminating. To be honest with you, part of me was thinking I'd post the lot here, but not only is it long and depressing in parts (you can make a lot of mistakes and bang some terrible people in 10 years), I also cannot possibly imagine why anyone else but me would care. Maybe I'll just put in in an unlisted post so if by some chance anyone IS bored out of their minds and mildly curious to read about someone else's shit life, it can be found here. (If there's no link, I either chickened out or couldn't figure out how to do it) (or both)
The biggest takeaway I had from doing it, was realising not only was I making the same mistakes over and over again, but it seems the mistakes were all I could remember.
I guess it's true you don't remember every lovely but ultimately inconsequential evening you had with close friends in a cosy bedroom with a bottle of wine, but you DO remember with startling detail the time a once boyfriend got so mad at you for wanting to go home that he launched a candle at you from across a crowded pub. But it said a lot about how I prioritised these memories in my perception of my life story. That was what came to mind first. Not the joy and growth and exploration, but the regret and cringe and misery. 'It's the universe telling you there's things you simply cannot bring with you into this new decade', I heard echo inside my brain, and I knew the nice horoscope youtube lady was right.
So tonight, as the time approached 11:11pm, I completed the ritual.
Using what I'd recognised as the dumb shit I do and always have done and cba to do anymore, I wrote out five things I want to release myself from and to manifest for myself in the future. I pulled three tarot cards and placed them before me; the four of cups for the past, the four of wands for the present, and the nine of cups for the future, and after wafting the pieces of paper over fumes of sage, and clutching rose quartz, labradorite and moonstone to my chest, I burned them one by one.
And as I watched my words dissolve into the air and float off into the universe, I thought deeply to myself, this may all be bullshit, but no more bullshit than all of the other things I've done in the last ten years.
And if there's anything that's going to at least make me feel like I'm moving toward becoming a better, healthier, more capable person, then that's all good by me.
