Bullshit season

There is fuckery afoot.

Whether or not you believe in astrology, I don’t think anyone can deny that there is some fuckery afoot right now. For us believers, the culprit is Mercury, who is very much and very rudely in retrograde (and will be until the 22nd).

They say that Mercury Retrograde messes everything up: plans, communication, contracts, good moods. After the week I had last week, I am finding it hard to poke any holes in this theory. 

Here are just a few things that happened within those hallowed seven days: I got into an argument (my first in six years!) with my therapist. I was blown off for a phone date not once, but twice. A couch I ordered six months ago (not a typo!!!) finally arrived on the day I started a new job, five minutes before I had to jump on a video call with a client. The couch would not fit through my door and had to be unboxed in my hallway and dragged it into my apartment, meaning I had to use every bit of life force I had within me to pull the VERY large box through my significantly smaller doorway (and yes I DID trip while doing this and arrived to my call five minutes late, red-faced, sweaty, and frantic). And finally, kicker of kickers, I was non-consensually sexted by a man named Jef (one F!) before 10 am on a Saturday. So if you don’t believe in this stuff, that’s cool and all, but please keep it to yourself because I will not be hearing it at present.

All that said, it wasn’t necessarily a bad week. It was chaotic, yes, and unpleasant things happened, but I know I am not alone in finding that times of chaos have a surprising way of reminding me that I’m an actual person interacting with the world. This should not be an easy fact for me to forget, but put a girl in her apartment for over a year with only limited exposure to the outside world, and her sense of self can get a bit skewed. 

I mentioned in my last newsletter that I’m not great at enjoying my life when it gets easy and feels plentiful. My most comfortable state in which to exist is one of mild disappointment and longing, but my next-most-comfortable state is whichever one I’m in when I’m faced with bullshit.

I’ve had a surprising number of people comment on this throughout my life. In times of duress, colleagues have called me unflappable and friends have said that I know when to spring into action. I may not always be convinced that I deserve good things, but I’m always overconfident in my ability to take control of and reverse bad ones.

This is only a good thing sometimes. It’s good when I’m blocking Jefs on Instagram, but it’s bad when I’m hitting the eject button in a romantic relationship because my internal alarm bells are telling me that there might be rejection on the horizon, and that I’d better pull out now and protect my feelings before I get hurt. 

I think there’s a lesson here that I’ve had difficulty fully grasping until now. My life is mine and I have influence over how it unfolds, but it’s also not all up to me. I tend to sit at one end of the spectrum or the other: either nothing is within my control (disappointment, longing) or everything is (there is bullshit present and I must eliminate it immediately).

I’m trying to be conscious of these extremes and get comfortable living somewhere in between them. While I want to realize and exercise my agency, I also want to recognize that it can only take me so far. Bad things will happen and Mercury will fuck things up every now and then. All I can control is my own reaction and what I take away when the dust settles. 

My feeling is that as summer descends upon us, so too will more bullshit, whether or not Mercury has anything to do with it. I’m going to try my best to take it in without immediately trying to shut it all down. It may not be fun, but wading through it is how we grow, how we learn our limits, and how we realize our own strength. Bullshit season is where bad things happen, but it’s also where the unexpected happens, and after a year of stasis, I’m willing to try to find where I might fit in among it all.

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Before I go, I want to take a moment to share a fundraising link for the 9-year-old boy who was orphaned in a senseless, racist mass murder in London, ON this past Sunday. If you haven’t donated, I hope you will. If you can’t donate, I hope you’ll share it.