Have you heard about Saturn’s Return before? Every 27 to 29 years, Saturn returns to the sign it was in when you were born, a cycle that’s considered a tipping-point for adulthood in astrology. Saturn is meant to represent restriction, borders and limitations – most people don’t like the idea of Saturn because it’s a cagey energy, but it’s a necessary evil for without structure, everything collapses. I like to think of Saturn as the playpen that surrounds a toddler – you’re not trapping the child but you’re setting its boundaries. It’s considered a significant time period – think of Club 27 (where celebrities commit suicide between 27-30) or a mid-life crisis (the second Saturn’s Return). When you hit your Saturn’s Return, you realise you’re no longer living the life you wanted, you’re outgrowing yourself and it’s time to restructure. For some, this looks like death.
I’ll soon turn 28 and I find the metaphysics fitting for my life affairs.
People struggle with change – but not me. I’m a powerful manifester – everything I want, I get, I must change if my circumstances are to favour me. I’m like a remote pointed at a TV, switching to a new disguise, a new personality at the flick of a thought. I call it adaptability, and it’s best served of my own volition. For those who spot the contradictions in my personality conclude me to be confusing, complicated but mostly weird. This manipulation of the crowd and myself is draining and I’m limited to small doses – which makes me the perfect mistress but ill-equipped for long-term partnership.
Not to be confused with a defense mechanism, delusion or a lack of integrity, my adaptability is calculated and doesn’t conflict with my values, and I take full responsibility for it. I exercise this ability at will, and when moody or off-guard, most people will notice the kaleidoscope of characteristics under my belt. Weird, maybe, but I’ve never been accused of boring anyone in my company. For me, all I need to do is decide which personality best suits the situation I’m in.
My adaptability is one of my favourite tools in my survivability kit. But its rusting. It’s not doing what it’s supposed to do– some characteristics are coming off stronger than others, others are subsiding, the adaptability only lasts in smaller doses, I’m needing more time to return the centre of my personality axis. I’ve bent my psyche back and forth so much that I feel it’s going to break. Not to mention I’m juggling a full-time condition. I’m not used to this inflexibility, it sucks, why can’t I just charge into life and get what I want like I always have? It’s easy to blame my PMDD or depression, but that’s just a scapegoat to avoid accountability. I can tell this bodes deeper, this has to do with the real me.
I like the real me but I also like to keep her to myself. You’ve caught glimpses of her; every version of myself is an exaggerated extension of her. The real me is full of pride. Maybe it came from my lineage. I’ve always battled people of my culture and upbringing because we shared the same monolithic pride. Maybe it’s just another tool in my survivability kit, one that was needed early on to detect that the circumstances I was born into were not acceptable. If it wasn’t for my pride I’d never fight for something better. Or maybe I was just born with it. Either way it’s there and for now, it’s making things impossible.
No wonder they call pride a sin. My adaptability and pride used to be friends, both working in unison for my favour. I’ve always been appreciative of my pride, I avoided much danger and harm due to its inflated nature. But pride only knows one style: upwards, winning, forwards, better, stronger, territory, anything productive. Pride is righteous like that, adaptability not so much.
Take the issue of money. It doesn’t matter how much money I might need. I have never, could never, ask someone for money, for that would be admitting I wasn’t *something* enough to do it myself. When it comes to my business the thought of lowering my rates sounds backwards, unrewarding and it sends my pride into fits of rage. My adaptability has absolutely no quarrels with rates or service, it can do anything to meet my needs. If I wanted, I could ask for money, most earnestly, thanks to my adaptability – but I never would. Adaptability works best with the environment I’m in, it can’t reconcile my pride – that’s my job. And pride no longer serves me, rather than stomping over my circumstances with the bolster of adaptability, it’s spearheading up the mountain of my situation and failing. And it blames my adaptability.
Yes, I can now see why people struggle with change, as I’m in the same boat. My pride makes it impossible to take a step back, to be retroactive, to try anything that sounds like losing. All the options to overcome my situation are no longer upwards or forwards. I feel I’m boxed in. But there is a way out, it’s just not the ‘right’ way. I must try something new, something considered unthinkable in my pride’s eyes. Times are getting desperate for me – you don’t need to know how or why.
I’m changing my life, or at least, the way I attend to it. Saturn is returning, and my pride and stubbornness need to let up. I must push aside my toughness to make space for vulnerability, my next step to adulthood. I have many responsibilities, a heap of self-imposed pressure, little energy and feet too tired to keep marching. Battling personality semantics is only wasting what vitality I have. Arrangements have been made in all areas of my life to change, in ways people might find uncharacteristic – but they’re not, I’m just adapting to my circumstances, like I always have.
This will become apparent in how my business appears. While business might restructure, the way I deliver my services will stay the same. I feel I’ve perfected the labour of sex work and I feel nourished when I know I’ve done a good job. While pride might struggle to accept vulnerability as the current status quo, and think I’m going the wrong way by shifting things around, it’s not my pride that makes the final decisions.
It’s the real me, the one I keep to myself, who makes the final decision – and she sure has a lot more compassion than she does pride.