The Thinking Other Woman

I noticed something very interesting, looking at the good leg/bad leg transits for this relationship.

It may very well be that a good portion of the relationship transit legs actually go with the choice we had to end the marriage and be together back in 2016. Remember that there was a whole good leg where I was in a relationship and very happy. Then, if you will recall, it sort of disappeared and died out, and the next relationship transits started talking about a codependent relationship around years 2023-2034, where one partner codependently started going along with things he didn't really like, while the second person (presumably me) had Big Career Transits, took her eyes off the relationship to deal with them, and discovered her partner had a codependent fit because of that.


Mayhem ensued, affairs, planned affairs, unhappiness, and what sounded like a nasty divorce. Interestingly enough, Nu Mindframe once did an "alternate universe" tarot reading, and the cards I picked told a story that sounded just like this.

I have to wonder ...  Does this mean my achievement as a writer was tied to whether or not I sunk my teeth into his neck and refused to give him up years ago or not? Because I have found, and I am very sad to say this, that the ONLY way I ever get something I dream of is if I am eventually going to end up in a painful, painful, painful lesson because of it.

I mean, look at this: I met and married my late husband. Look at all the painful lessons there. Cancer, death, early widowhood. Sure, I learned I could stand on my own doing a lot of things I didn't believe I could ... but WHAT an awful way to do it. What an awful outcome. And after only seven years of marriage, too. Sheesh.

I wanted the degree I have. Gosh, what an awful lesson in learning to listen to myself instead of struggling for the approval of parents and family instead.

I wanted Chi. And, for four months, I got him, but look at the painful lessons there. Every page of this website is evidence of that.

Is there any way, ever in this life, I get something I want that doesn't turn ass-horrible?? I'm beginning to think not.

Hear this out: If Chi and I had gotten together, it would have been an enmeshed, codependent relationship. Which would have gone swimmingly at first, since I was all pumped up on Being The All-Knowing Rescuer and he was The One Who Needed Me In Order To Feel Okay About Himself.

We would need to learn this was unhealthy. Therefore, I would have to become a successful writer, so I would have some other Ego-Enhancing Bullshit to take my eyes off of him. We'd need something to fuck the relationship up, so we could see how unhealthy we'd been and have a pile of shit to wade through and a bunch of problems to solve.

Not only that, if I'd gotten what I wanted, I'd have been all ego-gratified and extremely happy, floating on the ecstatic feelings that make magic words flow from my pen. That's always when I've done my best work--when I was all pumped up on ego and believing I was going to be God's gift to publishing. So, yeah, I would have looked at the situation, gone, "Well, I got the guy, didn't I? And look how happy we are! So I'm going to write all about it!" And written a bunch of beautiful prose.

Is it true that I'm only talented when I'm being STUPID and SICK?

Could be. Because since I've been dealing with Reality, I've been so depressed I haven't been able to write shit, and what I have written ... crickets. And people saying, "Ehhh ... we don't think this is much good."

Good Lord. What if my prospects as a writer were tied together with hanging onto Chi at all costs, and I couldn't have one without the other? Because that transit that says, "You got it all and now you're wondering what it was all even for," comes to mind these days. A lot.

So, now that Chi and I are over irretrievably--now, we made the decision and there's no going back and undoing it--I don't need a big career success anymore, so now it's not going to happen? Sounds like Saturn to me. All you get with Saturn is trouble, basically. (At least, if you're me.)

Why would that be? Because every time I was presented with a choice in my life, I was picking things for the wrong reasons.

Career? Because my family would be too angry if I backed out. Because I'd have to listen to them put me down for it for the rest of my life and I was too weak to handle that.

Husband? I was impressed by him and looking for someone to help me out in life. Those weren't the only reasons. I did genuinely love who he was, and even after I began to suspect he might be overestimating where his writing career would take him, I married him anyway--because he was a wonderful person and great to be with, and I loved him the way he was.

Writing? Because I was having such a hard time in that career I was afraid I would be homeless. I saw ONE author, the ONLY author as far as I know, who made a real writing career publishing a fan fiction, and I went "I could do that!" and made up this whole big story for myself about how I'd be a shoo-in at that, and once I was, of course my family would forgive me, because I'd be such a big success at something people admire--PUBLISHING! BESTSELLERS!

It was just a way to get out gracefully, to be excused for not making it, and I was so pumped up on the idea of Public Recognition--because I felt like a failure and I believed it would make me feel better--that that was what I craved, not the actual nuts and bolts of the doing of it. Slogging through hours and hours and hours of just writing. Making a cover. Struggling and struggling and struggling and struggling to get KDP to work right. All the shit you have to do to promote and sell books that doesn't work out anyway.  I mean, all writers dream of Big Success, but how much was my writing about that and about Showing Off How Much I Knew, and What A Great Person I Was, and how much because I actually enjoyed my stories?

Chi? I had always felt inadequate and like I couldn't take care of myself in life, and here was a person successful in his career, and doing all the things well I couldn't do. All he needed was love, and I could give him that and he could take care of me! Poor, poor reasoning, indeed. I'm no better than his wife in this regard. Poor Chi.

At least I grew up and woke up. Last I knew, she hadn't ... and where is he still?

Oh, well. I know now Chi would not have made a good life partner. Not without a SHIT TON of WORK that, at last sight, he was UNWILLING TO DO.

The truism is all the same. At every turn, I get what I want only because it has a HIDEOUSLY painful lesson to teach me, and if it doesn't hold a hideously painful lesson then I don't get to have it.

Lessons learned:

I have to do what I want, not what others want because I am afraid of losing love if I don't do it. If that is how they feel, they really don't love me anyway. I'm not really losing anything. 

Only be with someone if you genuinely love who they are and the relationship really does feel good to you. You will be taught some painful lessons anyway ... but, you know, everyone dies. And I knew he would go first and I chose that anyway because I loved him. (Really ... all that was so tough, if he'd waited til I was this age, I don't know if I physically could have done it.) 

Only choose to do something if you actually enjoy the nuts and the bolts of the time spent in the doing of it. (This is life on planet Earth. You won't get anything else out of it anyway.)

Do Not choose a person because you feel weak and inadequate at life in some way and you think they will compensate for you in that area so you won't have to do it. It Ends VERY Badly.

I don't mean that's all I ever thought of Chi, so I don't care about him now. If he ever showed up, and he was healthy enough, I still could see choosing to be with him because I would like to discover and enjoy who he was. He was a sweet, brilliant person. He just didn't think that of himself.

But ... kinda looks like ... that is never going to happen now in this life.

Figures, doesn't it?

You know, you would think, after all this learning, something could just work out to be good for me just so I could experience something good. When you do the right thing, that is when you are supposed to be rewarded, right?

Doesn't look like it. At least, not from here.

From this vantage point in my life, I see that for all this hardship, all this pain, and all these miserable lessons learned, I have very little now to look forward to. Nothing at all, actually.

So, all I can do from here on in is continue to make good choices.

As far as I can see, those are to accept the tiny little human that I am, to understand that nothing I do is superlative or deserving of any special attention in any way. That is because I am just a human being like all other human beings, not special, not superior the way my parents needed me to be, just an ordinary little old fat woman getting old like all other little old fat women. Just a nobody, nobody special, nobody in particular at all.

AND THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT.

There never was. Everybody is ordinary. I know we think we need to be extraordinary here in the United States in order to be worthy of anything at all--and that's why no one believes ordinary jobs should pay enough to live anymore--but it isn't the truth. Never was. We all need to learn that.

I don't expect much from life anymore. I do not expect Chi. I do not expect another life partner. I will never have a family. I will never have a home with other people, where I belong and I love them and they love me. I will not have much of anything in my old age. I will die alone. And I will spend my days in a pretty boring life until I get there, just going along working at my job til I'm too old and sick to do that anymore, and then doddering on to the nursing home like all other little old ladies.

That's going to be my life. It will be an ordinary life, and my job will be to be happy in it.

LAST LESSON: TO STOP REQUIRING EXTRAORDINARY THINGS IN ORDER TO BE HAPPY IN AN ORDINARY LIFE.

We already have one Donald Trump. Why continue to make myself that obnoxious?

Okay. I've done that. I've gotten there. Now, can bad things stop happening to me, please?