At the beginning of each month I watch YouTube Tarot Readings. Well, I don’t really “watch” so much as listen while I’m “multi-taking”. They are always fun, it teaches you about tarot in a way that helps your own readings and the readers tend to have soothing voices, or at least the ones I listen to do. They always present a new way to think about how to approach life in the coming month. Last month the message was think Luck not Lack. This month it’s to trust yourself.
I was working through this monthly ritual of mine and nearing the end when I listened to a reader who I rarely connect with, but she’s so enthusiastic it’s always enjoyable. The reading was going as it usually does with my laughing at her antics when she said something that left me shook. So shook in fact, that I talked about it in therapy and am still thinking about it four days later.
The reader, Water Baby Tarot, had been talking about a recent hurt or rejection, and how terrible this person was to us. She went on and on about what an asshole they were and how sorry she felt for how hurt we were about to be. ‘Nope nope nope’, I thought, ‘don’t have anyone like that around and am avoiding those types of people like the plague’. Then she pulled a new card about 20 minutes in, “Oooooohhhhh I get it now- this isn’t something new, but something that already happened. It’s past pain and you’re afraid of repeating it.”
BOOM. Finally, a reading of hers resonated and it was depressing as fuck because it was true. Last year I had been treated horribly, over and over again, by different men and even a few friends who I am no longer friends with. I didn’t clean house, but the universe certainly cleaned it for me. 2018 threw a lot of shit at me in the shape of assholes and I’ve sort of been in hiding since.
She went on but I had stopped listening. I realized how terrified I am of making the same mistake, yet again, with the wrong person, yet again. I am TERRIFIED. Not of a man, not of a job, not of a better life but of myself. I am terrified of setting myself up to be hurt the way I have been, of repeating cycles and not being able to move forward. I am terrified my life will never be what I want it to be. I am terrified that I cannot change it. I am terrified that I cannot change. I am terrified.
How do you un-terrify yourself? Do you just trust that this time will be different even when history shows it likely won’t?
It’s normal to feel stuck in a repetitive cycle when dealing with depression, and it can be hard to get out of it (both the cycle and depression). You begin to worry you’re using depression as a crutch or a way to push people and opportunities away because you can’t seem to change anything. But then you have those days where you just want to step in front of a truck and it’s like, oh yeah, depression. THAT feeling is real, it is not a crutch. And not everyone feels that, especially not frequently. I have to remind myself over and over to be kinder (to me), and that nothing stays stuck forever, plus I’m too nice to just have mediocrity be my life.
But I am terrified it will be. Terrified.
too fat to be italian 