I seem to have spent most of my adult life getting pulled into the problems, dis-ease and life of others. It is interesting to me that today Mercury is finally about to clear its square to my Natal Neptune in the third house of siblings and communication and perception as it is the final planet to do this as Venus, Mars and the Sun have all squared Neptune over the past few months and I know in reading Liz Greene’s psychological take on Neptune many years ago it really has been a powerful ‘undoing’ influence in my life.
Neptune deals with that nebulous place where our boundaries are unclear. It is like the amniotic fluid that the embryo floats in. Those of us who are highly attuned to the needs and egos of others and have nto got to develop what psychologists call ‘firm ego boundaries” often suffer from Neptunian problems. Neptune also rules alcohol and drugs and other substances that can ‘erase a sense of separate self. Erasing a sense of a separate self is ideal for creative work which is one reason Liz Greene advises those of us with this influence strong to get involved in creative work, but when it comes to interpersonal relationships it can be highly ‘messy’. And sometimes we need to lose our boundaries in another, but it is ideal if we can move back into them too and for some of us negotiating this dance is difficult as porous Neptune also shows we subject to ‘infiltration’ from others projections, agendas and will and desires which may not always have our own best interests at heart.
The messy situation I have been involved with Scott since May last year is a Neptunian one par excellence. The boundaries have kept morphing along with requests for ‘help’ and my fears and boundaries often challenged. There is no way I can blame him for what I see as a divine given playing out of an important life lesson for me. I just don’t want the level of pain I go through to keep stopping me in my tracks and stealing away my happiness. There have never been any threats on his behalf to cut off the relationship if I don’t do what he wanted, like in my last relationship where I got given the silent treatment a lot. And I do see parallels between our two situations in terms of feeling ‘stuck’ but the truth is that today when I managed not to get caught up in his struggle and drama is that I am only as ‘stuck’ as I tell myself. I got myself out in the car to the park to avoid more texts today and read a brilliant novel by Rupert Thomson I started this week. I felt happy and free again as opposite to the anxiousness I always feel now when he texts me. I often make myself do things that make me feel like this because my inner critic tells me I am being “woos” if I don’t. I see that having relationships for me is often predicated on me denying my true feelings and twisting myself out of shape and re reading Christine Northrup’s book on energy vampires and empaths helped me to pin pint something vital yesterday.
I actually feel it energetically when his energy is reaching out. It took me a while to get going today and I was doing fine but my energy started to go ‘off’ or haywire and when I checked the phone, sure enough he had texted in response to a text I sent saying the entire scenario is just making me so angry right now I need distance. In the car at the Park contemplating all of this I remembered what Thomas Moore writes about in his book on Dark Nights of the Soul. He says that in order to survive and thrive at this time we need to learn to become far more attuned, watchful and savvy so we don’t get hooked up in other people’s transferences and hidden agendas or find ourselves constantly having to soothe their own anxieties, in short others need to face their own ‘tough stuff’ too, if they really want to mature.
All that said I do fall into a lot of my ‘being alone’ abandonment when I think I finally need to let this entire thing go. I just sat with my inner child last night and let her know no matter what she thinks she really isn’t alone as long as adult me doesn’t abandon her any more. I also had to sit with the painful memories of every other time I was betrayed or left in past relationships. I was very hurt by Simon when he kept sleeping with me even after breaking it off and telling me I had more to offer than any other person he had ever known. When we travelled to Scandinavia in 1986 he hooked up with a beautiful blonde girl there and sent me home on the boat at Helsinki. This was only about 18 months after my father had died. It was so so so painful and that is not to mention four other relationships in which I allowed myself to be emotionally abandoned and then act out the pain in active addiction. Scott never abandons me emotionally and will not either if I stop helping, so sad to say now I have to take the risk of putting myself as Number One and taking the risk we may not get to meet for 18 more months. I just feel that this time I have to choose for me, even if it means I end up ‘alone’. I think of how much I sacrificed to stay close to my sister and Mum and I will always be glad in one way I chose to be with the people I loved even if they put me down at times and failed to value who I really was, I always tried to keep the connection open, but at times it makes me very sad too.
However, as inconsistent as my Mum was I do remember the many times she told me that of all her children it was me she was most proud of for kicking my addiction. And no matter how much the Inner Critic tells me I am a waste of space I know it isn’t speaking the truth and that my value doesn’t need to ever again rest on anything outside of who I truly feel myself to be inside, a gift of life to life, a person who has had so much trauma and has done her level best to keep growing and opening herself to life, even though at times shutting down has been so essential too.
