Bipolar disorder is weird. Most of the time, I feel pretty ok with how my life is going. I’ve spent years training myself to be a lot better with recognizing and righting my negative thinking cycles.
But sometimes, my “sadself” tears her way through to the forefront of my mind and won’t shut the fuck up. The past week leading up to last night’s new moon have been nothing but that.
Who invited her?
She was there with all the old classics:
- “No one ever wanted you.”
- “You are a burden on everyone around you.”
- “You are an abusive, narcissistic bitch.”
- “You are a lazy, fat slob.”
- “When’s the last time you ever really felt understood by anyone?”
- “Attack everyone because you feel insecure.”
- “Who would want to be around someone as obnoxious as you?”
- “Your partner is just waiting for the right opportunity to leave because your mental state is terrifying.”
- “You just think you are working hard and succeeding, but really you’re just sitting around watching YouTube and being a useless, and smelly, sack of shit.”
- “Your partner secretly hates you.”
- “Correction: everyone secretly hates you, including your own parents.”
- “You’d be doing everyone a favor if you just died.”
She’s intense. I don’t know where she comes from or who the fuck invited her, but damned if she doesn’t take over the steering wheel of my life every few months.
This time around she almost destroyed my relationship. I’m still having a hard time trying to trust the reality of the situation. To really trust anything. The bad parts of the past week keep playing through my head on repeat. I feel trapped by the inevitability of the rearing of her ugly head again. I don’t feel comfortable talking to anyone about it.
However, I have made an appointment to speak to a therapist in a week. That decision was strongly motivated by the resurgence of suicidal ideation.
I am surrounded by loving friends and open ears, but I feel alone. What a cliche.
Tarot Readings
The Phoenix Preistex
In light of all this turbulence, I decided to get a new moon reading from an old friend of mine. We exchanged light pleasantries via text (the usual early 30s “I’m busy” “Oh, same”) and then they jumped right into the reading.
Notes from the Reading
Reading Date: 06/02/19
Then: Seven of Swords Reversed
Dishonesty and theft in the past. Unscrupulous behavior in past business contracts/dealings made you feel like giving up rather than taking a stand. In moving forward, work to understand and anticipate next moves. Understand how the game is being played so you are not blindsided in the future.
Don’t allow yourself to give up prematurely. Don’t allow yourself to feel lost and like you can’t continue. Find the courage and initiative within to keep moving forward even though it seems like everything is working against you.
Now: The Tower Reversed
You might have been taking responsibility for something that was not your responsibility to take on. You also may be holding onto some kind of idea, career, relationship that is not able to stand the test of time, so by holding onto it you are allowing your past to repeat itself in your future.
The tower in reverse signifies a sudden destruction without warning or without our knowing. It does not mean that it is the end. It does not mean you can’t keep going. Every person falls; the rich, the poor, at some point everyone experiences it.
Moving Forward: Five of Swords
There might be some conflict or dispute. Potentially within family, potentially within your career, maybe just being a victim of the system. Not everything is lost. Even though there is a lot of tension, conflict, or battle within relationships with others, it’s ok. It is supposed to happen. It is clearing space out.
When the fighting is done, it’s important to not provoke or continue to antagonize the energy. Let the battle be done and walk away with what you have.
Don’t get caught up in what you’re losing. Remember what it is that you are fighting for. Remember what it is that you truly desire and what you’re truly trying to manifest.
Overall
Really, this is all a mental battle. When you allow your brain to stop playing everything over and over and over again, or you play it through, watch it, and then take it out of the VCR, it’s going to feel a lot better for your brain.
Also, it could just be that so many internalized energies are starting to manifest themselves externally. Stuff that you might have thought you had moved on from, but you didn’t really deal with because you didn’t really access or tap into the source of the issue, may be bubbling up again. You may have built surrounding friendships, relationships, situations on that trauma, on that idea that that was who you were and that was your identity. With that identity now being destroyed, things can start looking different. It can start to look a little more complicated than you thought.
Main message: you are not losing everything. You are losing major things and you might be losing major things in the situation you are asking about. That does not mean that you lost, it’s over, and that there is nothing else for you.
Feelings and Connections
I don’t think tarot cards are magic. I feel like they are a deck of varied, common themes throughout the human experience. The real meaning lies in the connections your mind makes to the randomly-drawn cards, revealing your largest areas of concern and need for reassurance in your decision-making. I apply a similar outlook to most divination systems.
This reading was among the few times that I have felt like my mind was being read. We only exchanged a few lines of small talk over a text messenger so there was no way for them to read my mood or state.
Particularly, the bit about the recording playing over and over again was almost word-for-word what I said when recounting my insecurities to my partner.
Per the Five of Swords, so much of our arguments felt like I was the one looping back and antagonizing the situation due to my inability to let go. My inability to take the tape out.
The part about it being a mental battle also hit close to home, due to my ultimate decision to contact a therapist to help sort through some of these emotions. I felt like whatever methods I have been using to keep my “sadself” identity at bay are not working as effectively because they aren’t dealing with the source of that trauma, which was also reflected in the reading.
Self-Reading
I’ve felt a bizarre shift yesterday (the day of the new moon) and today.
I won a contest yesterday (which I still am not allowing myself to believe) while I was preparing for an interview.
That same interview was postponed because there was a mix-up in the materials I was sent, which ended up being a good thing, as I was more anxious than expected due to a missing conference call link.
I went out for dinner and drinks with some old co-workers and friends.
My mom put one of our old cats down, but it’s been so long since I lived at home and with my own cat passing earlier this year, I felt weirdly detached from it.
It was just a roller coaster of weird feelings after a week of really deep melancholia.
Honestly, everything feels back to normal today, but the aftershock of the past week still reverberates in my mind. I don’t feel like I can trust it, but I also feel like dwelling in it isn’t going to do me any good either.
Anyways, I decided to do a reading myself so I could just have a check-in with my mental state.
Notes from the Reading
Reading Date: 06/04/19
AKA: The part where I pick out the parts from two different guidebooks that stood out to me in my current situation.
Then: Page of Cups
Key meanings: news, fun, opportunities, a messenger, creative beginnings, synchronicity
A sensitive imaginative, young person; they may also be a psychic. Encourages you to take a fresh perspective on a difficult issue and to approach that situation with benefit of doubt, love, and compassion. Listen to your intuition and believe your dreams. Indicates the beginning of a spiritual journey.
Very positive sign that you will soon receive a job offer out of the blue that will be very favorable. As this card refers to younger people, it often represents jobs in teaching or social work. You will be more drawn to creative work and may want to explore your artistic or even intuitive or psychic abilities in your day-to-day work. It doesn’t necessarily mean a full career change.
In an established relationship, your partner shows tokens of his appreciation for you. This is a time when you can both renew the romance in the relationship by returning to the early days of your connection. Surprise your partner with loving acts of kindness. You could both try to set aside your differences for a while and live life in the moment.
Now: The Empress
Key meanings: The matriarch, fertility, femininity, creativity, authority, abundance, peace, beauty, nature
Shows a deep connection to our femininity and represents a mother, wife, female partner, or influential female. Femininity translates in many ways — beauty, sensuality, fertility, creative expression, nurturing — and is necessary for creating balance in both men and women.
Calls on you to connect with your feminine energy: draw on all of your senses to experience pleasure and deep fulfillment, spend time with your partner, discover new ways to creatively express yourself, spend time in nature and connect with Mother Earth.
Combined with the Page of Cups, signifies a potential pregnancy on the horizon for self, family, or loved ones. Metaphorically, this can also be the birth of a new idea, product, or new way of being.
Potential career paths include gardener, artist, therapist and teacher, among others. The Empress brings financial abundance. Your financial situation is likely to be positive and may well be a result of you giving to those around you and then receiving in return.
Home life is harmonious. Connections in relationships mature and you will reach a new space where you are incredibly comfortable with each other. New ideas, abundance, and blessings suggest that you and your partner may begin to dream of how you can continue to create your future together.
If a relationship is experiencing trouble, the Empress acts as a reminder to communicate more openly and honestly with each other. You need to come from a place of love and compassion when you share with each other and discuss your feelings. This is a time to let go of defensive barriers and truly open up to each other.
“I bring forth my creations with joy. I love and nurture them into fruition.”
Moving Forward: Five of Swords
Key meanings: Conflict, loss, defeat, exposure, win at all costs, tension, betrayal
If you are in a relationship, this card reflects that there has been a recent falling out of you are currently experience a high level of conflict and tension with your partner. To move past this difficult time of conflict, you need to be able to forgive and accept each other. You may have said many hurtful things to each other that you now regret, and this has significantly damaged the relationship and caused tension and distrust between you.
You will need to understand where each other is coming from, forgive each other, and then move on. You need to put your tail between your legs and apologize for what you have said and done. You must accept responsibility for your actions and you must be very humble when it comes to giving an apology. Even if you think you were right in some circumstances, you must show your partner that you were not right in what you did and you regret what happened.
You may be better off laying down your sword and treating loved ones with compassion and understanding. Reflect on what you get out of this “us vs them” mentality and what truth about yourself this situation may imply. Perhaps you have a deep, hidden need to question your own position. Or maybe you are projecting some trait you dislike about yourself onto another person. Or is it just that your ego is defending itself at the expense of your happiness. In any case, try to think of this person as a teacher rather than an enemy.
Feelings and Connections
The mention of some sort of teacher position in the Then and Now card is relevant, but I am not going to get into more detail than that.
I feel like the young, creative psychic refers to the Phoenix Priestex, whose reading left me encouraged to let go of my repetitive toxic behaviors and to not antagonize the energy, by practicing compassion and forgiveness.
With the Page of Cups, I’ve been having a difficult time trusting my partner’s acts of kindness and accepting that his tokens of affection aren’t a trick, even though he’s been making considerable effort to make me feel more comfortable, loved, and appreciated. The Empress card also supports letting go of these defensive barriers and accepting this harmonious moment in your home life.
The source of some arguments revolved around the topic of feminism, so the encouragement to tune into the more feminine, nurturing parts of myself stood out. My partner has been trying to encourage me to take walks out in nature (connect with Mother Earth) because it helps a lot with his mental health and notices that it improves mine, too.
Odd that I pulled the Five of Swords for my Moving Forward card, since that was the same thing I got in the earlier mentioned reading. And again, there’s another message of forgiveness, acceptance, and apology. At least this time, you are really accepting responsibility and doing something about getting better control over the part of you that continues repeating these patterns.
“Let the battle be done and walk away with what you have.”