Today, my tarot card of the day was The World. For you tarot readers and aficionados, you know how fitting it is to have the last card in the Major Arcana at the end of the year. I believe it’s a great sign for me. If you’re not into tarot, it is a card that marks endings and completion.
There are a few ways of viewing this, so I’ll just make this post a reading of sorts.
A Welcomed End
The first thing I thought when I saw this card was that the troubles and challenges that I’ve faced this year are complete. This year was very chaotic for me, but I feel like I squeezed as much knowledge and wisdom and healing and growth as I could.
As we look at the world, with all the upheaval, strife, the disasters both human-made and natural, there’s still a lot of hard and terrible things that we’re dealing with both individually and collectively.
New challenges are always arising, but I’ve found that being forever a student about life is one way to make sure that you can remain flexible. You can learn how to drop old coping mechanisms that you used in your youth and find better ways to cope and deal.
There are a lot of things I’m still seeking out in the world. But within myself, I am whole and complete–and so are you. That’s what The World card reminds us.
And although we’re all whole and complete by ourselves, we do need each other to unearth all the treasures that we have. We need others to support us on this journey of becoming (or rediscovering) who we are.
An Unwelcome End
It’s strange, too–I’m a little sad that this year is ending the way it is because I feel like I’m in the middle an ellipsis, or like I’m the bouncing ellipsis you see when someone is writing a Twitter DM or text back to you. My “moment of triumph” is still being written–and that’s a good thing. The World card also says to me that it’s not even necessary to put an exclamation point when only a period is necessary.
It’s done. Period.
But back to The End…this year sucked a lot, and I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. Even though there are challenges we’ll carry into the New Year, it doesn’t mean that you have to continue to carry the emotional baggage that came with those struggles.
Granted, healing from trauma usually begins when the painful events ends.
For example, it took me many years to emotionally heal from having to take eight years to get through college and how that long circuitous journey of stops and start was one I couldn’t really control. That period of waiting and attending and betrayal and exile and return took up most of my 20s.
The bleeding may have ended when I graduated at age 26, but the pain was still there and I still have a scar. Now I could really deal with the trauma because I had stopped fighting. The war was over and won, but I was still wounded on the inside.
I had to work through (and sometimes still work through) the shame and disappointment of not being able to graduate with my classmates. Besides the career detours and blocks (which apparently is why I’m a writer and not a doctor (and I don’t regret the path I am now now, by the way)), I lost practically all of those relationships, and part of me will still grieve not having close friends from college anymore.
The expectations of having college being life-changing were met in ways I didn’t really welcome.
Sometimes, things end prematurely–a marriage, a beloved job, a loved one dying. So sometimes, The World card isn’t a welcome sight.
Another Ending, Another Beginning
But things end and start again all the time. If I hadn’t gone through the premature ending of leaving college after my junior year, I would have never met the lovely soul that I was my first boyfriend.
When I was looking at the card, I thought it was an ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail. But whatever that is, there’s the representation of a circle, a cycle of life, beginning and ending and beginning again.
Life is always in flux and is cyclical (Sing it, Elton).
Things may be over and complete, but then there’s always a new journey to embark on–one of healing and personal restoration.
So if you’ve have experienced trauma and harm this year, I hope that these events have ended and the healing journey begins, even now.
Goodbye to another shitastic year
I believe this is a custom to clean a house either on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day. It’s not one I grew up with. So symbolically, I cleaned the common areas of the house today.
I mainly focused on the refrigerator and freezer. I cleaned the dusty top, the oil-splattered side, and the filthy interior.
I took out all my food and all the shelves and drawers and cleaned. I am going to be right sore tomorrow–so help me (please), naproxen!
Proud and petty sidenote: I left the shut-in’s door section unclean because that lazy ass fucker doesn’t do anything except take the trash to the roadside when it’s his month. 😏😒 Also, there’s this cream cheese that has been on his shelf that’s been expired for months. 🤢
Anyway, I wanted to be rid of that racist shithole’s energy, Sir Coughs-A-Lot (the renter before the racist lunatic) energy, and even the Russian kid’s energy. Be gone, be gone, be gone!
I also wanted to literally wash away this year. I don’t really have enough cleaning agents for that, but it felt good to take out my frustration, sorrow, disappointment, and shame on a fridge and a house and have it turn into something orderly, clean, and beautiful. The house now has the light scent of lavender–which I hope will usher in even more peace and calm to this place.
The Peace Within and Without
But lavender aside–it’s a peace and calm that started from within–a very hard fought peace in a time of conflict. I mean, sure there was some meditation involved, but a lot of it was making sure that insane in the membrane shitbag hit the bricks and left this house.
The cool thing to me is that preserving the peace within usually will spill without, into other areas of your life, into other people’s lives. It’s difficult and almost impossible to do in our times, but it’s difficult and almost impossible to not pursue inner peace–however you can healthily achieve it…
So. I don’t know what you need 2019 to be for you or what 2018 has been like for you.
Maybe you don’t feel whole and complete. Maybe you feel like this whole year has been The Tower. Maybe you’ve had a string of years that look like The Tower or Five of Cups. I know what it’s like. I know what it feels like to be proverbially falling out of a burning building, or to have some cups of precious things spilled–and to mourn all of it.
Whatever you’re hoping the New Year brings, even if it’s just relief that it’s not 2018 anymore, I hope that you can find and usher in peace within–the kind of peace that brings personal and collective clarity in an ever-changing and increasingly hostile world.
And, I hope that we will be that kind of peace for each other.
HNY.🥂
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sun opposite moon 