Loneliness is something I have unfortunately gotten used to over the past year. All my life I had been the kind of person that had friends. Not all of them were close friends, but I knew enough people to never have had to be alone for more than about an half and hour at a stretch.
At my first year at college, before the 'episode', I had a few friends, and I went out and about a lot. Unfortunately for me, I didn't really care about any of these friendships because I was completely enamored by this one boy, and I ignored everybody else in favor of him. Also unfortunately for me, he didn't care about me. So basically, although I had friends, I had succeeded in isolating myself.
The year I returned, after my leave of absence, I was sure I was going to be on better terms with everybody - including that Certain Boy, who I was sure had feelings for me and just 'didn't know how to show them.' Blech. Sometimes I make myself vomit.
Anyway, the second year was about a million times worse. Yes, I was better settled, I was in my senses for one, and I knew what was going on, but I was depressed, and to be honest, I had no friends. I did have a few friends from the year before, but I didn't meet them often and I barely spoke to any of the new people in my classes. I was socially fucked.
So this year, I hope to change things. I have started working out and have lost a bit of weight, which is already making me feel more confident about myself. I haven't smoked in about six weeks and I feel great and I don't think I will ever go back to it. I just feel awesome.
So I asked the cards whether I would make any new friends this semester. This is the reading:
Question: Will I make good friends this semester?
Where I am: The Sun
My future: The Fool
What I should do: The Hermit (reversed)
What I shouldn’t do: The Magician
Reading: I feel great about myself right now. I am at a place where I am starting to feel confident and happy and healthy. If I continue like this, I will have truly achieved the state of the Fool - I will be carefree, uninhibited and be able to relate to the people around me as myself and not some persona I assume in an attempt to get them to like me. What I shouldn’t do is isolate myself like The Hermit would. Instead of shying away from people in an attempt to spend more time with myself for the purpose of ‘finding’ myself, I should go out and spend time with people. I should accept invitations to parties, go out, talk to friends of friends, really spend time with the people I might have otherwise just had one or two conversations with. What I shouldn’t do, however, is impose myself on people and try too hard and force a friendship that isn’t there. To be more like the Fool, I need to go with the flow, be less dynamic and more easy-going, care-free and honest about my true friendship. The less demanding I am of people, the more they will get to see me as the real me - a care-free, laid-back, self-satisfied young woman.
If I follow the advice of these cards, I really think I will be a lot happier this semester. I am more excited than nervous for what is to happen over the next three weeks and I feel that that in itself is a good sign.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Friday, August 26, 2011
My First Reading
I have forgotten most of what I learned in my tarot class last year, and am in the process of teaching it to myself. The best way to do this, I believe, is to start with small readings of your own so that you can find a context for each of the cards, rather than arbitrarily read descriptions of them in books.
For my first reading, you might need to know a bit of background information.
For the first fourteen years of my life, I was a fit, athletic girl. I played tennis and swam - both competitively and though I wasn't half as good as some of the kids out there, I was just as equally active and fit. Then I put on weight during my board exams because I completely stopped exercising, and started eating like a pig while I studied. I continued to put on weight through my pre-university years although I did start losing it again towards the end, and by the middle of my first semester in college I was slim again.
In college, I got the attention of boys, I was called hot after a long time, I was even called beautiful. And then the whole manic episode thing happened and I got put on medication that increased my appetite and I was depressed so my appetite was doubly increased and by the end of 2010 I weighed 200 pounds.
Right now I am in the process of losing that weight and I am fighting hard to do it. I have lost some, but its happening gradually - very, very gradually. So gradually, in fact, that I am starting to wonder whether its ever going to completely happen or not. So today I asked the cards.
I am only doing this reading with the Major Arcana cards, because I am starting re-learning with those first. I remember them a little bit better than I remember the suits. So here is my first reading. Also, I am doing a cross reading i.e. four cards arranged in a cross: one for where you are, one for where you will end up, one for what you should do and one for what you shouldn't do.
Question: Will I lose weight and become beautiful in the eyes of the world?
Cross reading
Where I am: Strength
My future: Wheel of Fortune
What I should do: The Lovers
What I should avoid: Death (reversed)
Reading: Right now I am controlling my lifestyle, my food cravings, my laziness and my general ‘fat’ mentality. This will lead to a dramatic change in my life - or perhaps, my outlook on life - and very soon things are going to move quickly and in the right direction. Perhaps I will lose weight fast. Perhaps my newly acquired good health will make me a happier, better functioning human being. Perhaps, in turn, this newly acquired happiness will give me the confidence to make new friends. Maybe I will go from being the drab, lonely girl to the girl that has good friends, some admirers and is happy and comfortable within her own skin. Perhaps I will be what I yearn to - and was probably always meant to be - a happy, well-adjusted, loved and accepted young woman. However, I should not resist the changes I am trying to make because I am lazy or get discouraged with slow-to-show results and decide to give up. I shouldn’t stay stuck in my old ways and I definitely shouldn’t allow myself to stray from my goal. My goal right now is health and not ‘famed beauty’ and ‘complete control over the heard of every man on earth’. I need to keep my expectations realistic and this will help me avoid stagnation (and discouragement) better. I should, however, maintain balance in my mind and my habits, and keep in touch with my inner self. I shouldn’t obsess with superficial things, like getting back at people who called me ‘fat’ and ‘ugly’, and I definitely should not let negative influences become my primary drive to achieve my goal. I need to do this for me, because it makes me happy, not because I want to use this to make someone else feel bad. I should embrace the love and compassion of the people that have been good enough to give it to me in even my darkest hour and use that as fuel to become better, rather and try and achieve this goal to become ‘better’ for the sake of demeaning or ridiculing those whose love and compassion I do not have. I should be positive and right now, my happiness is what comes first.
I hope that eventually someone will read this blog and comment on my reading. It is very basic right now, I know, and I have a long way to go before I understand the cards well enough, but I think I am going in the right direction.
For my first reading, you might need to know a bit of background information.
For the first fourteen years of my life, I was a fit, athletic girl. I played tennis and swam - both competitively and though I wasn't half as good as some of the kids out there, I was just as equally active and fit. Then I put on weight during my board exams because I completely stopped exercising, and started eating like a pig while I studied. I continued to put on weight through my pre-university years although I did start losing it again towards the end, and by the middle of my first semester in college I was slim again.
In college, I got the attention of boys, I was called hot after a long time, I was even called beautiful. And then the whole manic episode thing happened and I got put on medication that increased my appetite and I was depressed so my appetite was doubly increased and by the end of 2010 I weighed 200 pounds.
Right now I am in the process of losing that weight and I am fighting hard to do it. I have lost some, but its happening gradually - very, very gradually. So gradually, in fact, that I am starting to wonder whether its ever going to completely happen or not. So today I asked the cards.
I am only doing this reading with the Major Arcana cards, because I am starting re-learning with those first. I remember them a little bit better than I remember the suits. So here is my first reading. Also, I am doing a cross reading i.e. four cards arranged in a cross: one for where you are, one for where you will end up, one for what you should do and one for what you shouldn't do.
Question: Will I lose weight and become beautiful in the eyes of the world?
Cross reading
Where I am: Strength
My future: Wheel of Fortune
What I should do: The Lovers
What I should avoid: Death (reversed)
Reading: Right now I am controlling my lifestyle, my food cravings, my laziness and my general ‘fat’ mentality. This will lead to a dramatic change in my life - or perhaps, my outlook on life - and very soon things are going to move quickly and in the right direction. Perhaps I will lose weight fast. Perhaps my newly acquired good health will make me a happier, better functioning human being. Perhaps, in turn, this newly acquired happiness will give me the confidence to make new friends. Maybe I will go from being the drab, lonely girl to the girl that has good friends, some admirers and is happy and comfortable within her own skin. Perhaps I will be what I yearn to - and was probably always meant to be - a happy, well-adjusted, loved and accepted young woman. However, I should not resist the changes I am trying to make because I am lazy or get discouraged with slow-to-show results and decide to give up. I shouldn’t stay stuck in my old ways and I definitely shouldn’t allow myself to stray from my goal. My goal right now is health and not ‘famed beauty’ and ‘complete control over the heard of every man on earth’. I need to keep my expectations realistic and this will help me avoid stagnation (and discouragement) better. I should, however, maintain balance in my mind and my habits, and keep in touch with my inner self. I shouldn’t obsess with superficial things, like getting back at people who called me ‘fat’ and ‘ugly’, and I definitely should not let negative influences become my primary drive to achieve my goal. I need to do this for me, because it makes me happy, not because I want to use this to make someone else feel bad. I should embrace the love and compassion of the people that have been good enough to give it to me in even my darkest hour and use that as fuel to become better, rather and try and achieve this goal to become ‘better’ for the sake of demeaning or ridiculing those whose love and compassion I do not have. I should be positive and right now, my happiness is what comes first.
I hope that eventually someone will read this blog and comment on my reading. It is very basic right now, I know, and I have a long way to go before I understand the cards well enough, but I think I am going in the right direction.
The Beginning
For the sake of secrecy, I am going to call myself TigerQueen. Which is interesting, because if anybody does end up reading this blog, they will come to know me better than most people who know my real name do.
I am a college student, and I am at what some might call a cross roads. At least, I was a year ago, and was coming out of it now.
Some horrible things happened to me in 2009. I had a 'manic episode', was involuntarily admitted to the psych ward, came out only to be shoved into therapy accompanied by medication, and basically my life was in pieces.
I was in love with a boy. Surprise surprise. It always leads back to a boy, doesn't it? Well, there was this boy and I was in love and I thought he was and even today I'm not a hundred percent sure he wasn't. Either way, things got weird (my fault) and I was unhealthily obsessed and this drove me crazy and thats how the whole psych ward admittance happened.
Anyway, after that episode, I really didn't know who I was anymore. Was I really just some crazy bipolar lady who was slated to go through the rest of her life with 'CRAZY' tattooed in big letters across her forehead?
Was there something deeper?
Was a part of me trying to come out?
I really didn't know. And that is where my journey really started.
I took up a lot of things that year. I started playing the sitar, I got my first internship at a newspaper, and I began to delve into the tarot. I took a class, and I will not mention my tarot tutor's name or post her notes online, nor will I give out any of her intellectual property (the stuff I paid to have access to) out online.
But the fact is, my life is starting to change. Now Tarot can either be a big part of it, or a small part of it.
Maybe this is a passing fancy. Maybe this is something that will come to have greater importance in my life.
I am a person of extremes and obsessions and I analyse and over-think and get caught up in pipe dreams and I wear myself out and I'm always worrying, always looking back, always cringing at my past, always agonising over the future, always scared, never in the moment. Maybe this has always been me or maybe this is just me recently.
What I do know about me is that I come into and go out of obsessions very frequently. What stay with me are the regrets, the hurt, the failure, the loss - what go are the lessons and the answers and the growth.
I need to be more like the Fool. The Fool is my icon - at least for now, this might change over the next few years, months, days, minutes. What I also need to do is allow my experiences to become me, and try and not let myself control the experiences. I need to do what the Fool would do.
And maybe this is me negating the whole principle of the Fool. Because by obsessing and forcing myself to be like the Fool I am not being like the Fool. The Fool just IS the Fool, the Fool never TRIED to BECOME the Fool.
Either way.
In one sense I am like the Fool. In a negative way. I get bored very easily and move on from one project to another like a dazed butterfly. I never complete anything. And maybe this blog will end after the third post. Maybe. I don't know.
This blog is me talking about my life and my journey out of the woods (its like I'm in Dante's Inferno). And I hope tarot will help me through that journey.
I will post my readings (the ones I do for myself) on this blog, talk about my spirituality in general, and maybe post some more mundane stuff about life.
This blog is my new therapy.
I will remain nameless, but if you actually end up reading this, you will know me like you were my best friend.
Let this begin.
I am a college student, and I am at what some might call a cross roads. At least, I was a year ago, and was coming out of it now.
Some horrible things happened to me in 2009. I had a 'manic episode', was involuntarily admitted to the psych ward, came out only to be shoved into therapy accompanied by medication, and basically my life was in pieces.
I was in love with a boy. Surprise surprise. It always leads back to a boy, doesn't it? Well, there was this boy and I was in love and I thought he was and even today I'm not a hundred percent sure he wasn't. Either way, things got weird (my fault) and I was unhealthily obsessed and this drove me crazy and thats how the whole psych ward admittance happened.
Anyway, after that episode, I really didn't know who I was anymore. Was I really just some crazy bipolar lady who was slated to go through the rest of her life with 'CRAZY' tattooed in big letters across her forehead?
Was there something deeper?
Was a part of me trying to come out?
I really didn't know. And that is where my journey really started.
I took up a lot of things that year. I started playing the sitar, I got my first internship at a newspaper, and I began to delve into the tarot. I took a class, and I will not mention my tarot tutor's name or post her notes online, nor will I give out any of her intellectual property (the stuff I paid to have access to) out online.
But the fact is, my life is starting to change. Now Tarot can either be a big part of it, or a small part of it.
Maybe this is a passing fancy. Maybe this is something that will come to have greater importance in my life.
I am a person of extremes and obsessions and I analyse and over-think and get caught up in pipe dreams and I wear myself out and I'm always worrying, always looking back, always cringing at my past, always agonising over the future, always scared, never in the moment. Maybe this has always been me or maybe this is just me recently.
What I do know about me is that I come into and go out of obsessions very frequently. What stay with me are the regrets, the hurt, the failure, the loss - what go are the lessons and the answers and the growth.
I need to be more like the Fool. The Fool is my icon - at least for now, this might change over the next few years, months, days, minutes. What I also need to do is allow my experiences to become me, and try and not let myself control the experiences. I need to do what the Fool would do.
And maybe this is me negating the whole principle of the Fool. Because by obsessing and forcing myself to be like the Fool I am not being like the Fool. The Fool just IS the Fool, the Fool never TRIED to BECOME the Fool.
Either way.
In one sense I am like the Fool. In a negative way. I get bored very easily and move on from one project to another like a dazed butterfly. I never complete anything. And maybe this blog will end after the third post. Maybe. I don't know.
This blog is me talking about my life and my journey out of the woods (its like I'm in Dante's Inferno). And I hope tarot will help me through that journey.
I will post my readings (the ones I do for myself) on this blog, talk about my spirituality in general, and maybe post some more mundane stuff about life.
This blog is my new therapy.
I will remain nameless, but if you actually end up reading this, you will know me like you were my best friend.
Let this begin.
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