Confessions of a libra

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[ Song to loop: Spider by Luvcat ]

8:48am

I’m a Venusian coated Priestess of the Underworld yet, you would never know it. I let you in now because it’s educational, and because I say it’s time. Let’s talk about the sign of Scorpio while the season is ripe. For those without a stomach for Astrology, this won’t be overly technical or complicated but you will learn something if you like to learn about archetypes.

To call myself a Venusian coated Priestess of the Underworld is akin to stating I’m a sweet-scented poison. The Warhead inverse. My capacity to don light florals, my megawatt grin, and my softness all lull you into a false sense of security. She’s nice, you think to yourself but never allow it to ferment. You tell yourself you’ll do this one thing and surely I won’t notice, right? Over time, you convince yourself that, maybe it’s better for us both that you stay vague and ambiguous. That maybe I’m not pushing you because I like it like that. Like retroactive consent.

Instead, every time someone lies, deflects, gaslights, manipulates and tells me stories that do not make sense holistically, it actually triggers my Scorpionic traits. If you keep going, I get more obsessive. I spend hours late at night researching, plotting and planning. If you know me closely, you will have heard me say I always have a plan A, B, C and D. That is not a joke. That isn’t a quirky thing I say to sound scary or to sound precise. It is merely factual and accurate. Once a zero-in on you, my spirit doesn’t rest until the image is clear. Until I have figured out your whole deal in its totality.

Once I am clear about all the things you didn’t want me to know, once I see you clearer than I have ever seen you before, the cut is clean and exacting. Like a scorpion sting. I leave you in a sudden vacuum of your own chaos. I leave you and now you stand in front of a mirror unexpectedly arguing with yourself. Performing for yourself. Beneath the shell of the joy I claim as birth-right, is the shadow of Pluto the ruler of Scorpio. Pluto in Astrology rules all things hidden or buried (secrets), transformation, obsession, power, trauma, rebirth and the subconscious.

As such Scorpio represents many of these traits. Scorpio is known as obsessive, secretive, detective, passionate, intuitive, transformative, emotionally deep and fluent at power games. The most prominent placement I have in my chart is the Venus-Pluto square. This creates fiction between my romantic life (Venus) and themes of power, obsession, devotion and transformation. That makes me someone whose love and intensity run deep. Those of you who have ever experienced me in person or those who have read this blog from the early days will know.

This makes me someone who also draws intensity to me. I have genuinely been obsessed over and been pedestalised so much it irks me to no end. Let’s explore one of these bonds so you feel how this intensity played out. I met the Midlife Criminal (reference to prev. post) a couple of years ago and he was 16 years older than me. I know. Take a moment to judge then move on. We spoke on the phone one day and he regaled me with stories of his travels. I responded in kind with my outlandish life. We immediately organised a date.

The date was romantic and passionate. He was dressed very dapper, which suits my Venusian sensibilities. He asked when he wanted to hold my hand and soon we were drinking and all sorts of naughty things. We were visiting a gallery, clearly intoxicated, giggling and completely in our own world. It was as though we had never not known each other. We kept talking, I started spending more time with him. Wouldn’t you know it, my lease was ending, and I genuinely having a harder time than normal getting a house.

This is Brisbane era Thando, so I was trying to see if I could establish myself in a new environment. It had been harder than I thought. People in Melbourne think they have it bad, but the Brisbane housing crisis was so bad, several women I worked with had all moved in with their boyfriends in similar situations. It was hilarious at the time but I convinced myself it can’t be that bad. I was expecting Melbourne-results in a new environment which otherwise caused me strife.

So I move in with him. It was always meant to be temporary. While all this was going on, let me tell you a timeline of the things that I noted. We started talking a couple of week before Christmas so I didn’t expect to see him on Christmas Day. He stated that he was just at a friend’s Christmas do and really wanted to come over but didn’t. I noted it but didn’t say anything. Later we’re starting to hang out more and as he describes it, he goes out a lot. He didn’t really have much to do from what I could see. The more we spent time together the more I noticed the lack of substance in how he spends his days. There was something not genuine about it.

One time I was coming back from an inspection and he said he was nearby, maybe we could link up and go back to his. I accepted and jumped on a train he was on. He hugged me and we sat down. He immediately put his arm around me and began talking loudly in his American accent. A little loud for my comfort as a socially aware person, but he seemed to like to irk people so there was no point bringing it up. I looked down and noticed his last 2-3 buttons. There was something about the way they were popping open that made me wonder if he had just come from seeing a woman.

Is that crazy? It may be. But was my hunch correct? Indeed it was. Not that I brought it up that day or anything. I am showing you all the data collection. Each lover I have ever had has been a way to explore my own limits. I am multifaceted, so I get excited to see what each person brings out of me. With the Midlife Criminal I did notice that unlike when I was 23 and dated a Scorpio and explored my capacity for submission through him – the Midlife Criminal was getting a version of me that was much more clear. Much more whole and balanced in my masculine and feminine energies.

My then closest friend was right when she said I manifested this man in my early 20’s. We were talking about dating and I had said I wanted to date a bad boy. By the time the Midlife Criminal came, I intellectually thought I was over that, but clearly it needed to be done at least once. So I find myself rising from bed in the middle of the night over several nights to check his phone and iPad. At this point, there is no guilt because I KNOW he is lying to me. He is the first man to ever cheat on me and if anything it was training for my psychic ability.

I found out a lot about him. He watched porn that was steeped in powerplay, and I started seeing our sex life differently. I started seeing his dominance less as lived enjoyment but rather a trauma response. Especially the more I found out about his past, having grown up in a hippie commune in California. He liked to tell me to sleep closest to the wall so he could protect me if someone broke in. He is not the only man to have said this to me, but he is the first I felt most prepared to do so. He showed me his weapons, and he showed me his thirst. His wildness that had never left.

In some ways this era of me was amusing. I felt like I was existing in a case study but then sometimes forgot and actually couldn’t believe someone like him existed. One day I find some messages of him flirting with this woman and him trying to coax her into coming out with him. I let myself see. I let myself read. I let the betrayal, sink deep. But when you cross that kind of line with me, it turns off my emotional centre. When I thought back to the beginning, the vulnerable exchanges and even the talking of values, it wasn’t quite what revealed itself. Yet this was all in a matter of a couple of months.

One day, we went out with his friends for dinner. It was an awkward ride because we were barely talking. This was the death of the remnants of any belief that age and maturity are entwined. It wasn’t a new lesson, but it was the death rattle. I tried to let it go, the way he had been speaking to me before we left. He was throwing a tantrum because I was in his space more. And clearly, he needed space to continue doing what he was doing. Nothing pisses me off more than someone lying to me about something I wouldn’t care about if they were honest and respectful.

We had talked about exclusivity. In fact, he insisted on it. But rules for me and not for thee. So he knew I was able and capable of being open but he chose the lie because he is a little man-child who gets off on being ‘naughty’. Let’s be honest, that’s all it ever was. A performance of rebellion where one was unneeded. I knew we had compatibility, but that couldn’t overcome his ego and tendency to self-sabotage.

Back to the dinner, we have a little tiff about mischaracterising things. He wanted to paint a certain picture to his friends, didn’t want to let me talk. So, I simply walked out. I walked out, found a train station and arrived home after him somehow. I packed my bag while he was in the loungeroom. I don’t even know if he heard me. Then I left. He thought it was me being cute, creating drama we can then come back from. The loop that abusers love having you in. I said I was going back to Melbourne. Clearly from my being able to find a new place of residence and his weirdness, it was a sign that Brisbane has done everything for me that it could.

So I left. We had backs and forths. He sent me long messages and voicemails. To be honest, I was worried he might try and find me. I thought he was just crazy-enough in retrospect to do so. So I withheld my grudge and want to report him so he could be held accountable for his cooked behaviour. It was weird dating someone who wanted to bring that ‘gangster’ aspect of living on the streets of America here. He had lived in New Zealand and Australia collectively more than his younger years in America. Yet he held onto insecurity he didn’t have to feel if he chose to live an honest life.

He felt like living a shady life and creating enemies was his way of feeling manly because it gave him a reason to fight. I think he also might have gotten bullied for being Autistic so he learned how to fight to meet the masculine requirements of strength. The best thing he gave me was an opportunity for an up-close psychological and sociological observation. However I detest liars, the ungrateful, the rude, the misogynists, the selective traditionalists and selective liberals. He was all of those. He wore those hats proudly, his Leo chest puffed up.

It’s post relationship that I really put together a timeline of everything that I heard, everything that I saw and start drawing conclusions. This is pretty standard for me. It’s how I discovered exes who lied about education, money made/earned and trauma wrapped in caution. That’s the Libra traits kicking back in. We make sense of the madness, of the obsession and of the deep erotic longing. We question the lesson and the blessing. That man will never know how much he showed me I am already strong. If anything people should be scared of me not the other way around.

Not because I am messy enough to be violent, but messy enough to unravel your entire operation then write about it later for people to learn and grow. Not really what people expect. He wanted to own me, to control me, to have me at his beck and call. Instead he lost me in the blink of an eye and I never looked back. All the ways I enriched his life he pretended not to see? Suddenly, there was nothing left to argue about. He will continue getting himself in trouble, calling every woman who leaves crazy, having sex with anyone because he is about quantity over quality and find himself old and alone. With no rotation in sight.

My revenge is living a good life without you. I accept the Plutonian lesson. An old part of myself died with the relationship. I buried her, lovingly and moved on to be a powerhouse. I grieved for me and it felt never-ending. In retrospect, I bounced back in record time and outdid myself afterwards. So he gave me the fuel to do more for me. Which preceded this blog. I write this to remind you that intensity and darkness are transformative experience you can choose to wield not be whipped by.

The Morticia in me is as real as The Nanny.  I balance darkness and light in equal measure. This is why you can trust me to hold the deeper things you will not speak to others about. I will hold this part of you with care and tenderness. I am not afraid of darkness, which is why I have looked many an abuser in the eye. Just as I did as a child when a man grabbed me from my grandmother, held a knife to my throat and asked her for money. I merely blinked and stared. Recorded each moment with precision.  Life is entirely more bearable when you surrender. Surrender to the darkness and let it forge in you a new light. Asé.