To those who know me well, perhaps this comes as a complete surprise as I'm so normally so calm, cool and collected.
For the past year or so, Jupiter has been my friend, my pal, my bosom buddy. Lately this friend has been totally broadsided by Pluto--you know, God of the Underworld. To make matters worse, my other buddy Mercury has been stationing on Pluto.
Before we go any further, I just need to point out I really dislike it when people start blaming retrograde Mercury for everything from lost post to internet disruption to getting lost on the way to a party: Mercury doesn't cause that--people who aren't paying attention do. It's become an excuse: "oh I got stuck in traffic and it's all because Mercury is retrograde" as if traffic jams, delayed messages and dodgy internet connections never happen when Mercury is in forward motion. It's just ridiculous. Throw some empirical evidence in and the data nerd might pay attention.
Anyway, this story is different because Mercury was stationing (getting ready to change to forward direction again) on Pluto with a personal connection to my natal Jupiter.
So this past week, I've travelled across a continent (a big one at that) to be at a conference in India. I've have spent the past week pretty much under hot lights, getting my photo taken, getting bossed around, eating on schedule and getting lost in a 5 star hotel. Things are a little different to the way I like them to be, i.e. drinking tea all morning while I write, eating when I feel like and admiring sunsets.
Yesterday I just could not cope anymore. I was physically exhausted and rendered mentally incompetent. Decision making? Forget it! To top it all off, I had a splitting headache (I cannot even remember the last time I had a headache). In other words, I felt like shit. Really.
What had happened was I had booked some hotels to go to after the conference. These were online bookings with booking.com which has never let me down. Ever. But this is India. There are so many addresses no one knows where anything is. And I've been so busy with the conference I hadn't been able to sort out a sim card. I really didn't even know what that meant or why it was so important: until I needed to book a flight to Varanasi. Despite my best efforts, I just couldn't book a flight and suddenly felt very alone and helpless on this great big heaving continent full of people, horns, pollution and different languages. I also ended up losing--and paying for--my hotel bookings.
So I had a meltdown.
Nothing made sense to me anymore. Nothing! It took 3 people to talk me down (thank you Victor, Gopal and Julian) plus Michelle, Richard and Nick to assure me they had my back. I was totally ready to head back to the UK and get back to teaching until I was old enough to retire. My cats! My duvet! Yah, that's how freaked out I was. Get me back to where everything is familiar.
It was at that point I realised that perhaps I'm not such a bad Cancerian after all. All my life, I have denied being a Cancerian because I'm not even a little home-loving and shy. Or so I thought. Put me under (a lot) of stress and I just want my mommy (OK things never got that bad).
So these are a few things I learned about myself when I experience extreme conditions:
- I hate packing
- My hearing goes funny when I'm stressed
- My decision making process, dodgy at the best of times, goes tits up
- I have some damn good friends.
- I really need to remember all this