On 3/3/26 at 3:33 am there will be a full moon eclipse in Virgo. I have an alarm set to wake up and prepare to capture some of the energy it will be delivering.

Though conventional full moon energy is about culmination, eclipses disrupt this typical rhythm; they may result in a banishing, but the flow is less intentional. We have less influence over what we decide to release. Instead, the universe will wield its scythe to carve away what we need to shed to be ready for what will come to be.

Virgo places focus on matters of practicality, substance, and physical manifestation. It also rules healing, restoration, and release of outmoded energy. Moving what is inside us into future phases of evolution emphasizes our most repeated patterns so that we can determine whether they still serve us.

I won’t deny that this prospect is slightly daunting. The idea of any additional chaos descending upon my life right now feels less like a far-reaching trend impacting universal energies writ-large, and more like an admonition directed at me like a cosmic searchlight. So much of my focus over the last year has been uncovering the truths inside me that I had consigned to darkness so that I could bring them back into dialogue with the rest of the knowing I deploy in my daily life.

I have tried to make this deliberate effort with attendant courage and perseverance. With an eye on the future more fully informed by an integrated understanding of the past. The complicating influence of grief has been a force multiplier in many ways; its capricious nature injecting a series of staggering setbacks to my perceived emotional progress. It has left me feeling, at many turns, disconnected from time and divided from a grounded sense of place.

To further complicate this impression, I haven’t been sure where I would be living for the next year. There were moving parts beyond my control that were causing a considerable amount of anxiety. I was scrambling mentally to cobble together a strategy in case it didn’t go the way I hoped. Thankfully, I was able to confirm recently that I’ll be able to stay put. I’ve been delaying certain homemaking tasks because I didn’t know whether I would still be here long enough to enjoy them. Seeds to plant, curtains to hang, walls to paint have all been swirling in the back of my mind as ways to more fully inhabit my space. Now it feels safe to begin these undertakings, knowing I will be remaining in this place I have truly come to love.

So what else might this eclipse reveal to me? I’m a little scared to find out, even if it will only serve to illuminate what obstacles I need to sidestep as I keep to the path of restoration. Perhaps it will be softer than the glare of revelation I am bracing for, if the universe sees fit.

It beats the alternative, to be sure, but without a ready way to entertain myself, it still leaves me in the same conundrum.

I’m running, going to the gym, writing, and witchcrafting away. Even still, things feel unpleasantly stagnant. While I don’t blame ANYONE for my restlessness and I’m not in the habit of picking fights, I do recognize that I have to do something different if I want things to change.

That said, it’s a difficult balance to strike between choosing distraction to beat back boredom or staying present with the discomfort of ambiguity and stillness. All signs tell me to be patient: to resist the urge to push past the pause.

Recognizing that my discontent springs from restlessness rather than sorrow does help reframe my approach to embodying presence; with attention directed toward the impulse toward busyness rather than some unconfronted element of a larger grief. It softens the edges of sorrow into something less pressing. That in itself represents a change, so perhaps the process is already underway…

Of all the scenarios that can develop out of dating, the most uncommon is meeting someone compatible and proceeding to a meaningful long-term relationship. It’s happened enough for me that I know it can but I also understand it is the vanishingly rare exception.

Far more often there is a failure of compatibility, of attraction, of mutuality. An inability to connect or communicate with parity of depth. Asynchronous emotional development. Goals that are not in alignment. This is by far the most likely outcome of any possible pairing, the source of connection notwithstanding.

Far less common, though not exceptionally rare, is what I like to call the False Alarm. Where all initial indicators are positive, no apparent red flags are present, and yet for whatever reason, the connection misses. While it could be said that any missed connection might prompt some level of disappointment, these particular encounters are difficult and painful in their own special way, and I am still learning how to reckon with them.

An essential ingredient to these scenarios is a particular kind of intimacy; one that seems to develop almost instantly. I am a person that places a high value on candor, and certainly practice it myself. I have noticed this can have the effect of bringing others to reveal things to me they might not otherwise tell someone they met only recently. The number of times I have heard “I’ve never told anyone that before” or some variation thereof is incalculably high.

I accept these admissions of vulnerability with deep reverence. I am by nature a person that withholds judgement and can see past surface assumptions. As an ex of mine once said, I try to be “a benefit-of-the-doubt giving motherfucker.”

I think this tendency is something people are drawn to, but might not always be prepared for. Depending on their degree of emotional honesty – with themselves or others – this can alternately feel freeing, or threatening.

I have come to understand lately that a powerful sense of intimacy does not always result in a true experience of emotional safety. While one can develop from another, one is not ultimately indicative of the other.

For my part, this realization comes late because emotional safety has been all but non-existent in my life until I learned how to create it myself. For someone who didn’t experience it as a child or in any of my romantic relationships, it has been something I only began to understand initially as a concept rather than an experience.

Lacking a reliable template, I misidentified a kind of hasty and heedless intimacy as where a secure and healthy attachment would begin. I did not understand that the powerful feelings of connection I experienced were often the result of stress responses to novelty and physical attraction. Very often, months deep into a relationship, I would look around at the situation I was in utterly bewildered. How did I feel so close to this person at first only to experience increasing alienation as time went on.

It took time and self-reflection, along with a more thorough understanding of my CPTSD, to recognize the way I had conflated knowing things about someone with knowing them on a deeper level.

I also know it has worked in reverse as well; that people who knew things they considered incredibly private and revealing about me would mistake that for a meaningful understanding of who I am. People who would declare a deep attachment to me after only a brief acquaintance and then go on to describe a person that does not exist based on their assumptions about who I must be, to have shared the things I did.

It can be a fine balance to strike. There is a harmony to be found where people can reveal themselves to each other with candor and authenticity while respecting the pace at which meaningful and enduring intimacy can be developed. Acknowledging that actions must align with words and consistency of character across a variety of scenarios is essential.

All this to say that sometimes, should enthusiasm overwhelm this measured approach, sometimes two ships passing in the night is still better than having them collide.

In the wake of such moments, I now try to be present with emotions that can feel out of scope with the length or depth of the connection. A reliably obstreperous voice in me will clamor that I will never find true and enduring love. That this is simply one more example of the irrefutable truth I am unlovable.

I am learning to recognize this as grief, not just for the particular disappointment, but for the long years of my life where no such love was available to me from any source. The pain of that far outweighing the brief moment I believed something special had been kindled.

I am also learning to accept that it is part of the cost to engage in the defiant act of proving that voice wrong.

These are the stories I will tell myself until they are true.

There are lots of perfectly valid reasons this could be so:

1. Oscar has been less-than-totally quiescent. The grumbling and churning has woken me several times in the last few days.
2. I have another, newly discovered and utterly revolting health problem rearing its head.
3. In part because of items 1 & 2 I am not getting even my customary level of not enough sleep.
4. I am in the final stages of tapering off the steroids I have been taking for over three months and the hormonal shift is taking a toll in the form of constant headaches, joint pain, fatigue, and general malaise.
5. Louise (my remaining ovary) is doing her monthly song and dance.
6. I have been spending a greater than usual amount of time alone.

And, if I am completely honest, I cannot discount the fundamental, embarrassing, and irresistible truth that itâ€s been just long enough since I got laid that all of this is much more pressing thereby. So far, Iâ€ve managed to avoid taking any hasty measures to remedy this*, but I know that feeling lonesome is amplified because of it and that my resolve to make careful choices with long-term potential in mind seems less important by the day. Usually, I try to distract myself with affection from other sources. While less potent, it certainly helps take the edge off.

Add to that the inherent summertime challenge. People are busy; there are so many options it can be difficult to get on the schedule. Since I am also contending with Oscar and Louise, it can be hard to plan time with people who might offer a different kind of company than my body can afford. Itâ€s also the case that in an effort not to languish in my illness or recurrent bouts of self-pity and take advantage of what has been very favorable weather for a variety of adventures, I have tried to keep busy with things I enjoy. By and large, the hiking, running, camping and general larking about has been very good for me. However, the fact is I have been doing all of this by myself.

Cast in the best possible light, the idea is that I shouldnâ€t feel the need to wait around for someone else to come along and validate my plans. And while I can and do often have a perfectly lovely time on my own, I think Iâ€ve fallen into the habit of assuming I must do everything alone. I can hardly recall the last time it occurred to me to ask someone else if theyâ€d like to join me on an impromptu beach trip, hike, run or any other activity I employ to keep myself entertained.

In a less favorable light, I acknowledge my tendency to isolate myself when I am in pain; physical or emotional. I have tried to make a concerted effort to reach out and ask for help and support, and whenever I do, I receive it from multiple quarters and with gratifying speed and enthusiasm. The trap, of course, is that the more I need to reach out, the less inclined I am to do so. The more overwhelmed I feel the more I want to run away toward the horizon with the sappiest music I can find** and sing at the top of my voice while sobbing, or crawl into bed at 2:45 p.m. and not get back out until I next have to present myself at my job.

This doesnâ€t have a ready solution, in the sense that the protocol to remedy things is less than totally straightforward. I think too, that occasionally doing any of this is fine. It becomes troubling only after I notice myself tilting into a pattern where the only person I see outside the office for days on end is my equally hermit-like housemate as we pass each other in the kitchen executing a run for snacks to take back to our respective ends of the house.

So. What remedies? Other people, rest, hugs and kisses. Guess itâ€s time to get my prescription filled***.

* Really, shirtless selfies arenâ€t that bad, right?

**Customarily not reggae.

***Thatâ€s what she said.

Though I’m not dwelling on anyone at the moment, this song speaks in language I can absolutely relate to… Oh, yes indeed.

verb (used with object)
1. To leave completely and finally; forsake utterly; desert: to abandon one’s farm; to abandon a child; to abandon a sinking ship.
2. To give up; discontinue; withdraw from: to abandon a research project; to abandon hopes for a stage career.
3. To give up the control of: to abandon a city to an enemy army.
4. To yield (oneself) without restraint or moderation; give (oneself) over to natural impulses, usually without self-control:
to abandon oneself to grief.

It’s rare I get to combine a Defining Moment with Explodingdog, but so apt considering the weight of the subject and timbre of the moment under consideration

What caution might prevail in the face of persistent evident truth? Is there any litany of reason sufficient to overcome the tide of plunging heedlessness? None, in my experience; and though there have been any number of voices – my own included – ringing on occasion to warn against surrendering to such headlong reckless tenderness, it neither pleases nor serves to do so.

I have always been a Love At First Sight kind of girl. The unwisdom of this is of course totally evident to any rational person. Yet, like mystery, there are some things to which reason may not be meaningfully applied. And though I can, should, and will exercise caution in my actions, it both impossible and arguably misguided to attempt such restraint upon my heart.

To defy the draw of the fall is a feat I have never once managed, and I know I shall not now. Unprecedented though, is the accompanying confidence about what awaits on the other side of that tumble.  Foolish, perhaps this surety, but it is as irresistible after all, as the cause of all this consideration.

Yet despite the fact that I am undeniably happier, in better physical condition (recent spate of ailments notwithstanding) and closer to where I want to be than ever, I cannot help but dwell on the realization that the last time I lay in this bed, it was with someone I was falling rapidly and unwisely in love with. How though I do not want him back, and never have since I sent him away almost six months ago, I still miss him in ways I wish I did not. 

Wise people assure me that it is not so much him I miss as simply having a lover. I believe they’re right. That his significance, though real, is primarily situated in his being the most recent, rather than the most important. I can say with surety, that is true. For, though I loved him very much, there were always things that felt disconnected and I never fully trusted him or the situation.

Yet as I approach the full measure of time since I ended the relationship now matching the amount of time we were even together, I want the scales to tip away from thinking about him everyday. From things I objectively know are ordinary and unremarkable still feeling poignant and of import.

When I compare my life to a year ago, things are better in every particular. The only thing missing is a dangerous headlong tumble into the arms of someone who wasn’t really interested in catching me. As ecstatic as that feeling is, even that wasn’t better, just more exciting. I am far happier without him; I just want my heart to come around the curve, catch up with me, and notice.

Today I ran 6 miles, scrubbed the kitchen floor and other much needed chores. Then, inexplicably, I started listening to reggae; something I have previously never done without the incentive of pleasing someone who would then give me amazing sex. It’s Caribbean oompah music for Jah’s sake. Bleh.

I have no means by which to explain the progression of events. Blame it perhaps on a moderate dose of emotional whiplash and uncommonly powerful and sudden onset attack of nostalgia. 

Whatever the case, it’s made me feel the approach of Monday might come as welcome respite from my capricious mind, for once.