I am not an astrology fan. I think it’s total crap. And I have friends who not only believe the stars predict the future but on occasion have been professional astrologers. I can sometimes approach it as a game, but mostly I try not to get into conversations about it. But for a while now I’ve been reading the entirely bogus even to partisans newspaper horoscopes.
Why?
Because it reminds me that I have free will. No dozen pithy words of vague pronouncement control my life, and neither does anybody else until I choose it. And some days I have to remind myself of this.
The astrologers have told me that D and I should probably not be in the same room together, much less married. One of the reasons I don’t write so much about my relationship with D is that it isn’t a problem. Everybody has arguments about who may or may not have taken out the garbage, but on the subject of poly relationships we have no complaints. We know what is going on with the other’s relationships and, more importantly, we want to know. Neither of us have a sense of ownership of the other and we are not attached at the hip, but we always come home. We talk about everything, possibly to excess, and if there is a problem it isn’t ignored. I find other people’s starry-eyed affirmations tedious to read, so I don’t inflict them on you.
When I wonder what the hell happened with R the horoscopes all over the map remind me that, whatever it is, it’s between two individuals. Not two archetypes, and certainly not related to the drivel written on a daily basis. Depending on who you ask, we may or may not be compatible. Either he’s intensely loyal and romantic or he’s an immature jerk. Occasionally the daily missive says he should be fixing up his interpersonal messes and I ought to expect a gentleman caller, hat in hand. Which, of course, never happens.
I won’t be so simplistic as to say that “I choose to feel what I do.” I can’t explain, in any rational fashion, why I love either of them. D was certainly not an easy one to pin down, those many years ago. But I have a choice in what I do about it. It is sometimes difficult to choose to act in accordance with my ethics, but more difficult not to — feel good now or feel much worse later. And when I think of what happened it makes me ill just to know I was involuntarily associated with it. I won’t do something that I believe will only make it worse and I try to not do anything solely because I’m angry. When I wake up in the middle of the night with nightmares about R I have to remember that.
Addendum:
Today’s newspaper horoscope?
Is someone sincere about turning over a new leaf? Or is this another stalling tactic? You’ll know what the deal is by the 21st.
Well at least that is something that I’m sure I’ll have an answer to.
