REMEMBER YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING

I have this chronic problem. I blame it on my obsession with intuition--for those of you who haven't really seen this, I'm pretty convinced I'm a bit psychic. Yes, I joke about it but those jokes are really just a way for me to pad the situation for any observing parties. I genuinely believe I can feel people, not read their thoughts but gauge their character or immediate emotions through brief interactions. People take on colors to me, they vibrate at different rates, mostly it's observation--not magic. And once I've gathered enough clues, I'm pretty sure I've got someone pegged.

To be clear, this doesn't mean I won't give people their own chance to shine a light on who they really are. And it doesn't mean I've ever "made up my mind" about someone--unless I needed to. But, it does mean that I get tripped up by those analyses sometimes. This is a recent revelation for me. My past relationships have almost entirely been situations where I've met someone, fallen for those chemical reactions nearly immediately and then allowed that to guide my intuition instead of my actual gut.

Do you ever lean over the pool cue, set up your shot, and right before your wrist moves forward you know whether or not you'll make it? This is how I live. Deja vu is pretty regular for me. But, I can't always actively tap in and out. When my head or heart is swayed by too many other stimuli, my gut can't hear at all. The remedy to this is obviously to slow down. It's hard to tell what all the flowers are if you're always running through the gardens.

But, pace has been complex for me. For example, when I was bitten by that dog--for those of you not on my social media, I was attacked by a pitbull three weeks ago and pretty much incapacitated for two of those weeks; lots of blood, lots of bandages, didn't get much alone time bc I needed a lot of care, yuck)--anyways, when I was attacked, I kept explaining the frustration to people by saying that I'm one of those people who freak out if you stop at a gas station on the way to the beach. I just want to be at the beach; you said we were going to the beach; why aren't we there yet? Being bedridden was like being at the gas station for two weeks. It sucked.

I rush relationships in the same way. With friendships, it's simpler. We connect easily and are typically mutually enchanted but if later the connection proves more complex and less sustainable, then we just sort of fade away. With romantic relationships though, I'm not very nice. It usually doesn't take me too long to sort out someone I'm dating but I can easily get caught up in the swell first or for a while especially when things like "hyper intellectualism," "sexual charisma," or "raw talent" are thrown into the mix. Those things make me want to collect someone and I'll stay much longer than my gut would call reasonable.

This is what we call stringing someone along. I have actually lived out relationships for months while secretly being icked out every time I had to kiss that person--granted, that was in high school and early college but I've done it. As I've gotten older, I've instead started ignoring red flags. If my gut says something isn't right with a relationship, my brain finds a way to rationalize it or explain it away. Newly single, after another recently failed attempt to date, I'm thinking a lot about these patterns ad how to break them. Obviously, the remedy is to slow down--we've already ascertained this. I'm trying. I'm truly feeling it though for the first time. Maybe it's that scorpio//scorpio new moon or maybe neptune having turned direct is making this seem easier, but for the the first time, I'm seeing just how critical it is that I hole up in my heart a bit.

Although I'm about to enter the busy holiday social season, I'll be actively working to create a safe, practical space for me to interrogate these feelings while not adding so much new information. Wish me luck!

xxx

*photo credit to Heather Rose Herring