Lopsided

Given my memory is a bit spotty in places, usually in the folds and recesses where the past trauma lives, it’s quite surprising I remember precisely where I sat at my hairdresser’s home that day. I’m a loyal person so getting my hair cut, colored, and highlighted by my drug addicted hairdresser, turned sometimes friend, perched in her kitchen while facing the messy counter seemed normal for me. Despite the blame placed on the challenges and needs of her drug addicted mother, the poor choices she made repetitively all spoke to the toxic pairing of mother and daughter as partners in the crime of obliterating each other daily with both vicious arguments and drugs. In the kitchen-based salon, where fights weren’t public and purple hazes and glazes were put on hair and the occupants with equanimity.

Triggered by an odd combination of smells, sounds and movement, in my memory I can see and nearly feel her scratching out in the jagged, nearly illegible writing style of a long-term addict, the name of her astrologer. All while my resulting brassy hair dye stayed on a little too long and smelled a little to acrid, as I listened to her effusively sing his praises. And true to form for me, I tired of the waiting and was determined to speak to him right away.

We called. He answered.

As we skipped the blow dry and moved into speaking to Tom, he had an aura of a mystical creature who blended a finely tuned hand of expertise both spiritually and astrologically, with some downright psychic abilities. Asking for my birthdate, birth time and birthplace, he immediately asked point blank, “Have you recently experienced a great tragedy or loss within the past few weeks”? That question brought me to an immediate cascade of quiet tears which are the worst kind. Stopped dead in my tracks, I was no longer worried about my hair drying the ugly crooked curly it does on its own. And needless to say, I was hooked, given that my son had passed away less than three weeks before.

Being secretive by nature, I was still working my damnedest at operating like nothing had happened. Doing things like getting my hair done which was required since I was back at work, determined to make good out of this no good, awful circumstance. Within two weeks of his passing, we had physically moved to a new home. In what I would defend as necessary and vital, I had also sent my daughter back to a new school and singlehandedly returned us all to the grind of daily life. I was secretly hoping normalcy would breed more normalcy. You guessed it—these choices wind through my mind and soul troubling me since nary a one those seemingly “get back to it” choices ended up anywhere near normalcy.

So, when I say I’m a Scorpio through and through, after my session with Tom, I learned why. Why was I so driven in the face of extreme obstacles? Why was I so vengeful that I wouldn’t publish the obituary so his father’s miscreant side of the family couldn’t attend the funeral? Why was I so absolutely determined that I could withstand immense, sudden loss and keep on ticking? Why was I so secretive not telling many who felt close to me about his death until many months or years later.

It’s all in the diagram of your heavens at the time of your birth and my chart was lopsided. So much so that only two of the houses in my natal chart had anything in them. A visual and visceral depiction of my life that wasn’t lost on me as he described how rare and unusual this pattern is. You see, my sun sign is Scorpio. My moon sign is squarely in Scorpio. And my ascending sign is literally hours away from Scorpio, sitting barely in Sagittarius. On the cusp as they say. Or the birth time was recorded wrongly by the hospital and as he read on, he continued to espouse this as the most likely scenario, deeming me a triple Scorpio. Standing ready to kill the common enemies of sloth, apathy, and laziness in one fell swoop.

So, armed with this new chart and some predicted predestiny information, things felt a little better. Made a little more sense. “Things are going to always be out of balance”, he casually stated. “Don’t expect them to ever be normal”, Tom said with great conviction. His comments brought me comfort and to this day, I remain brave when tested. I’m a stalwart companion when I love you, which is as rare as me being comfortable with an Aquarian. Secrets are my thing and always for self-protection. Yet you won’t quite know how manipulative I am with my practiced partial truths coupled with a quick, quirky smile, distracting you onto the next topic easily. Yet you’ll know I’m lopsided like the tail of the animal, tilted to one side and ready to strike determinedly at a moment’s notice facing real or perceived adversity tail on!