wherever you go, that’s where I am

if you haven’t already followed me— you’ll know that i’m always thinking about what it means to be in good relation to others. that includes what boundaries feel correct to me under certain circumstances. as we move further into Saturn’s exit from His home and into a space where containers do not exist (hi, Pisces!) i have been thinking about how permeable i can make my own membranes. sometimes i can play with the containers i set, and don’t always have to be rigid about them.

i say that because i broke some down with an ex of mine, and tried to reconstruct our tentative relationship into something new, better, less romantic and more loving and platonic. i wanted to move it from a defined setting to one where we can get curious about what’s changed, and who we are as people in the present.

the process of loving someone includes grieving them when the demise creeps up on your relationship. for the most part, i’ve learned this unpacking is mostly insular. it requires a lot of self-reflection and awareness in order to get past any of the hurt and anger in order to reach a place of understanding. strangely enough, i had an opportunity to sit back and have an extended conversation (it happened through texts over the course of the long weekend) with the ex that inspired all of my grief posts. after all this time, we were able to sit down, collect our thoughts and unravel the end and aftermath of our break-up together. we sat and answered questions in a closed container where we could yell and cry and scream, and feel free to emote at each other.

as i’ve recommended previously: i do not encourage sitting down for a post-mortem (his preferred term) /exit interview (my preference) with an ex-lover unless you’ve already gone through a lot of self-reflection and internalisation beforehand. the two of us came in with some time and distance. before we agreed to do this, we hadn’t spoken for half a year. there may have been some individual texts sent out into space, but i ended up blocking them until i realised i left something at their place and wanted to retrieve it. and even then, enough time passed and i felt like i had moved on.

our conversation started out as curious toe-dipping, and brought us back into the recesses and depths of our shipwreck. as i told my former lover, we both really have one of my crushes to thank for this conversation.

after dinner, where we just sat and enjoyed each other’s company— my crush and i ended up chatting about whether or not we were still in good relation with our exes (whatever that means,) and how we would open ourselves up to those connections because they still were meaningful to us, and how we didn’t want to lose them. i, specifically, expressed that i would love to befriend a lot of my exes, but it would be difficult because of how badly we hurt each other.

of course, my scorpio placements cannot simply forget an individual who made such a profound impact on my life. in the case of heartbreak, i remember them and treasure the moments we shared because of the mutual abundance of love. this crush reminded me of those things, and how it can be okay to let go of that iteration of myself and my ex, and how possible it was to move forward if there is still love present (albeit, in a different form.)

so that’s how i ended up having a five day text-message bonanza with my ex-partner, one of the great loves of my life. here are snippets of the unpacking of our relationship, through the magic of an ‘interview’ and also copious editing and reframing.

before we began to unravel the thread of our demise, j and i had a very casual conversation about how they sent texts into space (meant for me) after they broke up with their then-partner.

when people ask me why i have such deep wounds when it comes to relating to others, there are a couple people i cite as huge influences. besides my caretakers growing up (duh, obviously— attachment theory plays a role in romantic and adult relationships too,) i’ve often cited j’s and my relationship as an example of what happens when something that feels so secure can often lead to misunderstandings when communication goes awry.

while i won’t go into specifics, i knew the minute j decided to leave, i was done. i was blindsided, and no explanation could justify how hurt i was. i made a conscious decision to not sit down and process it with them. which is how we ended up unpacking it through text messages (our safest space, for us to process each bombshell with ease and grace.) the reason i, maybe even unfairly, did not give j a chance to give their side was because i wanted to protect myself in the end. i set hard and fast boundaries, i blocked j on all forms of social media, and their number and i told them to stop texting me because seeing the notifications pop up on the screen made me nauseous.

one of my favourite film trilogies (which includes my favourite film, before sunset) meanders through a relationship that spans over 30 years, and each time i watch it, i’m reminded of the specific qualities i share with these characters. celine, in the clip above, talks about how people are hard to replace because they’re so unique. in the same vein, i believe that every connection i’ve had, before and after j, is unique to me. i think certain relationships can mimic one another, as love is universal— but at the end of the day, the things i share with another entity are as multi-faceted, special and rare as snowflakes.

as i processed this series of events with my therapist, i relayed that my buddhist studies were a huge part of this acceptance of endings. every relationship does end, no matter how we look at it: either by severing the ties that bind early on metaphorically and spiritually; or literally, by dying.

psychologist esther perel often talks about infidelity in terms of death, that the act of having affair is a way to beat back against death, an antidote to the death of that relationship as they knew it. while this was not the case in this relationship— and instead, more so just two people who were eventually not the right fit for each other, but loved each other very much— i know that viewing break-ups in this light helps me sit with it, and often pushes me towards grieving in order to heal.

j and i wrapped up our four-day long talk with the acceptance of what transpired between us, the ways we had (or had not) changed in the interim, and what our burgeoning friendship could look like in the meantime. while we’re unsure of what the future holds, it feels good to move forward on parallel paths, and write new chapters. though we are not the main leads in each other’s stories at this point— i’ll have eternal gratitude for the time they spent playing that role in my life.

as an aside: my books are open on fridays & sundays for chart consultations. i’d love to talk to you about relating and what it means to initiate you into your chart.