Another Saturn Return post, from someone else

"I was always proud of myself for my apparent immunity to the typical American's dread of turning 30.  Marriage and children aren't big priorities for me, so landing a man by that Momentous Birthday never hung over my head with the swinging terror that it does over many women's.  The specters of crow's feet and other signs of aging likewise don't stir me much.  Given my emotional history I always figured I would be lucky to be alive and sane at 30."

I hear ya, sister! Incidentally, it amuses me that Dianne has the same birthday as a friend of mine. I sure do love them Scorpios.

Yeah, this entry sparked some thoughts for me...

I also had the advantage of hearing over and over throughout my young adult life that 30-35 was when my mother "finally felt "like life made more sense and things came together."  I met similar sentiments in women all over the place--after the chaos of the 20s, the 30s, while not a walk in the park, at least marked the beginning of true adulthood.  And so, I greatly enjoyed being able to say honestly, "I can't wait to turn 30!"
It's still true, but for slightly different reasons--less because I'm looking forward to the onset of my 30s and more because I want my 20s over with already."

Yeah, me too. My 20's were filled with crazy people and death. I'm hoping this will change.

"Among Pagans, the Grendel of young adulthood is the much-feared Saturn Return.  Saturn, the icky planet of karmic yuckiness, is supposed to roar into your life like some demonic Santa Claus, leaving you gifts of disaster, meltdown, and existential angst.  Saturn Return is spoken of with the same hushed terror as cancer and tax audits.  But what is it really, and what does it really mean?
Astrologically speaking Saturn is the planet of responsibility, maturity, karma, and authority.  It is the stern father figure of the solar system, imposing limits and consequences that seem unfair but are really for our own good.  Where Saturn lands in your natal chart--both its sign and its House--tell you the sort of challenges you'll face when Saturn passes back into the same place it was at your moment of birth.  For adults that usually lands between the ages of 28-31.  (You can find out more about this at SaturnReturn.net, website of the authors of Surviving Saturn's Return.)
Saturn is now in Virgo, where it was when I was born.  It will be there until around the end of October, 2009.
I am not an astrologer and my grasp of the subject is rudimentary at best, but I know when I'm screwed.
The lead-in to my Saturn Return--depression, anxiety, personal crisis--has already been such a teddy bear's picnic that when I think about what else the next two years have in store I want to run away to a cave somewhere in Nepal and wear live animals as hats."

Oh yeah...felt like I was SR'ing for like, five years beforehand, myself.

Do I feel free-er now that it's over? To some degree, yes. I think mainly it's because my life is pretty non-psycho right now. Of course, people around me are having nuttiness, to the point where I feel like the eye in everyone else's storm...but as a walking chaos/drama magnet, that's how my life has been going since I turned 18. At least it's not my personal drama.

(I have no Virgo, but it rules the 11th house. One could perhaps make an argument that since said drama involves a friend, and an in-law, that could be related... okay, I don't think cousin-in-laws are in the 11th, but given that she's getting booted out of the family, maybe that puts her in the friend category?)

On the other hand, my SR was entirely about drama. I can't say I actually feel like I accomplished something at the end of it- it was all about having things thrust upon me. I'm still work-in-progress, with the progress bar somewhere around 20%. Sure, it's better than the 0%, but this is not how one is supposed to end their SR. I was too tired to make any progress towards any personal goals (which, to be honest, I threw out many years ago because personal goals and dealing with the long, slow road towards someone else's death are not compatible). Now that it's over, do I have any idea what to do? No. I am trying to figure it out, but I'm still stumped. 

Kind of ironic that I have Saturn in the tenth and it ended up having NOTHING to do with career, but with The Father. My career has stayed the same, with the occasional raise, but that's it. It's making more changes now, but not necessarily in a positive or negative direction.

"This is, of course, the wrong attitude.  Saturn, much like the Death card in Tarot, the Yew Rune, and other mystical bugaboos, will only plague you as much as you let it--it's all in your point of view.  If you approach transformation groundedly, with the understanding that you will come out the other side a better, more mature person, you're a lot more likely to have a smoother ride than if you run around screaming with your hair on fire."

Heh, I'm not sure which one I did...somewhere in the middle.

"Being a double Scorpio with a Pisces Moon, I'm no stranger to darkness and emotional tumult, and my life has been a study in painful unraveling followed by long periods of weaving with unsteady hands.  This past year I've drifted from end to end of the emotional spectrum: one minute I'm panicking about my impending birthday, the next minute I'm feeling crazily optimistic, the next I am in the fetal position under the covers wanting my Mommy. 

We are now at the twilight of the year.  Everything I look at and touch seems to be in a state of flux.  Everyone around me seems caught in transition--some moving forward with aplomb, some trapped between doors, some still so shocked by the idea of having to uproot their comfortable ruts that they are spinning in place.  I myself have resisted what's coming--whatever it is--with tooth and claw for months, dragged kicking and screaming as always into where I know I need to go.  Depression is a miserable place, but misery is comforting in its way, or at least comfortable.  It is the devil you know.  Change is the devil you don't, but its gruesome mask hides the faces of angels."

Good point.

"I've spent most of this year staring at my ceiling fan for long hours at night, trying to figure out what to do with my life.  My plans, such as they were, seem to have come apart at the seams, my coach has turned back into a pumpkin, my magic beans turned out to be, well, beans.  And while I understand the greater purpose of dissolution, all this time I have driven myself into a frenzy of doubt and confusion, demanding answers of a strangely silent universe."

Yup!

I still get angry with myself over dumb crap I did ten years ago.  You know, when I was 20, and fresh off the boat, and didn't know dick about dick--who on Earth would expect a 20 year old to have life all figured out?  Apparently I do, and I've never entirely forgiven myself for proving to be a fallible human being with the marvelous ability to blunder into the exact wrong choices...just like anyone.  I'm human!  I screw up!  My god!

Hah. I totally do that. At 21, I was so stupid that I think someone should have dragged me out and shot me. I can't forgive myself for being that stupid years later, either. Mainly because I knew better at the time and STILL continued to choose to do the worst and most destructive thing. I can't claim I didn't know better and was young and innocent.

"You're human! It's okay to be human!" is an argument that has never worked for me. I am all, "Who says I WANT to be human just like everyone else?"

"And as much as I know I need to let these things go, I think part of the reason I have been unable to is that I have had a fundamental misunderstanding of how "letting go" actually happens.  The nature of the phrase itself is the nature of surrender--not of effort, but of the release of effort, breathing-out, opening your hands and letting their burdens simply fall to the sea.  That's not something you can force, or something that you work at the way you study for a college final or earn a paycheck.  Dragging your burdens uphill trying to find the right place to put them down leaves you with an aching back and a trail of beautiful moments you couldn't take the time to enjoy because you were too focused on making it up the mountain."

I'm not sure how I let anything go. (Tauruses do not wanna.) It certainly seems to take me most of a decade to get over stuff, and then magically it's all, "Huh. I don't totally hate that person any more. What happened?"

"So, as I watch my Saturn Return grow around me and the year slowly decay, I have decided to stop fighting, to save my sword for a battle worth the blood.  It wasn't a big aha! moment, it didn't have a swelling musical theme behind it to alert the audience that This is Important.  In fact I was thinking about it as I drove from my hometown back to Austin yesterday afternoon after spending the weekend with my family.  I was singing along to Maroon 5, speeding past the cotton fields that are ready for harvest, and I thought, "You know what?  I'm done being worried.  I think I'll just stick with that whole 'I can't wait to turn 30' thing."   Then I went back to fantasizing about me and Adam Levine and a cozy dungeon built for two."

*applauds*

Whatever my life is moving toward, I'll meet it when I get there.  For too long I've prayed for the gods to send me a map while overhead I had the stars as a compass and the long-sleeping wisdom of my own sense of direction to guide me.  I have obsessed over point A and point B, always looking back and forward but never around.

Yeah...when I'm doing card divination for my future, the results come out as, "We have no idea what's coming up for you. At all. Total blank here." Uck. At this point, I'd just rather know if something was coming to change things. I am used to that being how my life goes...that my life makes changes because they are Towered on me from the outside. If something doesn't Tower my ass, then nothing happens. Taurus hates Teh Change again. Have to force me at gunpoint to do anything.

Being told it's a total blank slate and it's all up to me? Is not helping anything, really. I guess I'll end up staying a blank slate for quite a long time.