Birth Pains of the Anaretic Degree

The past few weeks I felt immensely contracted, the sense of gravity caving in on all sides and deep hopelessness and feeling trapped.

As if all the grief and regret of my life came to surface all at once, wishing I had done things differently. Perhaps I shouldn’t have followed my passions and instead created more financial stability for myself. Something with a matching IRA and health insurance.

What if I hadn’t broken up with that person I loved so much because I was afraid? Perhaps I would be married and in a loving partnership. And not so in it alone and putting so much pressure on my friendships. Now I’m too old to find love and unattractive.

Wishing I hadn’t left Colorado and stayed in a film festival job I loved instead of moving across the country to San Francisco to get a Master’s degree in Philosophy — something even I still don’t know what people do with. The student loan debt was a terrible decision and moving to the most expensive city in the nation. What was I thinking…

The self-judgment and sadness rolled in like waves, each one compounding upon the last. Until it reached such a deep well of depression and suffocation that there was nothing left — just emptiness ready to be filled again. Perhaps with hope or faith, or just to rest here in the stillness.

Then came the next phase of almost terror of the unknown, spending an entire day getting lost in the woods alone. I felt huge sexual urges and seemed obsessively fixated on dynamics with myself and others. Stuck in a loop of suffering.

Even my acupuncturist commented that my pulses are the weakest she has ever felt them. After a bout of rain and me spending around two days on my couch, it occurred to me to look at my transits — something I spend a lot of time doing for others.

Sure enough on that day, Saturn moved to 29 degrees Aquarius exactly squaring my 29-degree Taurus Sun, while Pluto at 29 degrees in Capricorn trining it. A rebirth and tension seemed inevitable…I would have worried if I hadn’t felt it. Until then I think I have somewhat underestimated what it means to have my sun at the anaretic degree. It took two heavy-hitting planets to remind me to slow down and be in the rebirth. I kept trying to rush myself through it.