“Why is everyone leaving me?!?”
I was holding back my tears as I gripped the steering wheel as I maneuvered my way out of the parking lot that chilly spring afternoon. I inhaled and exhaled, extremely happy for my friend, who after the recent years of challenges, an intense desire to own a home within budget and leave the state for the greater good of the family, finally has her dreams, not just within reach, but now in her hands. We hugged each other tight before letting go, knowing that this meet up was one of the last of the remaining few.
I am not one to make friends easy, the introvert that I am. So every friend I make, every meaningful connection I keep, hold dear and nurture. At least I try my very best.
Last year, I also said goodbye to another dear friend, who left for the Pacific Northwest. We met at Obi’s first corgi meet up. She took care of Obi sometimes before he was simply not ideal for him to be with other dogs. We’d take shots at the state of the State, which are by no means cheap as we are ordinary working women of color. We’d share our funny and not so great corgi stories. Until she and her husband were just so done with Texas that heaven magically paved the way for their move out of state.
The year before that, another friend, whom I coincidentally met over Bumble, left for a job further south. Also another ,who also got a job of her dreams, moved a little further north.
I thought of the Six of Swords, the card of moving away.
A boat, plugged by six swords to keep afloat, traversing a body of water with a cloaked person beside a child seated in the middle. A man stands overhead with a ferryman’s pole in his hands, pushing his entire body weight and force to propel the boat forward. One feels the heaviness, the grief of the passengers leaving to where they came from, while the boatman reminiscent of Charon, the ferryman who transported souls from the living world to Hades. An idyllic, treelined shore appears ahead of them. The waters of one side of the boat more turbulent with the movement, while the other side glass smooth.
When this card appears in a reading, it signals just that an imminent move out of one place into a new one. This move is never easy, one that you do with a heavy heart, but it is these painful truths that pierced you that buoy you to the next destination.
All friends were pulled by a greater need, desire and vision for their lives. It was both a push and a pull that was just too strong to ignore. The stars aligned and everything that once was hard and impossible had turned easy to get them to the other side.
In Jyotish or Vedic astrology, the planets - Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and the nodes: Rahu and Ketu, are not called the same way we know. They are known as “graha,” which is Sanskrit for “that which grabs or holds” as explained by William R. Levacy in his now out-of-print book, “Beneath A Vedic Sky.” It is also known as “navagraha” or the nine graha that have powerful influences or hold, if you will, on our lives in this Universe. In the Hindu religion, they are powerful gods or deities. To us, non-Hindus, these are simply what we know as heavenly bodies or planets. To us, astrology students and enthusiasts, these grahas are that which grabs or holds us to move us towards particular directions in our lives.
I had doubts about this term, but upon reflection about gravitational force that keeps us humans literally grounded on this Earth, I reconsidered. I also thought about the Moon and how it’s gravitational force is able to pull the oceans and seas off the shorelines and push them back to kiss the craggy cliffs, the powder soft sand beaches and the soles of our feet. How could one thing hundreds of thousands of miles away still have such impact to the breadth and depths of all our waters? How could one human, composed of over 60% water, be immune from it’s “powers”? If the seas and oceans could not resist, how could I?
If one Moon is able to grab and hold on to the Earth, then what more other planets even larger? There are forces at play that hold everything together, instead of hurtling in a scatter, in a mesmerizing dance of push and pull, both in keeping a safe distance or in closer proximity.
I breathed in and out again before turning the steering wheel to direct the car back into the main drag towards home. It was a lot of news to take because even as a full grown adult, I felt strangely abandoned. I fully understood the reasons for leaving, all for good, but it still stung.
They were moving, yet here I still am. My friends who’ve moved away were all grabbed by a force, both internal and external, that led them to eventually leave this Texas life behind. One that I’ve not felt yet at this point in time. Perhaps it is simply just telling me that there are still forces at work here for me, together with my husband and Curly. And I’m still grateful that I am not completely abandoned as we all still have each other.
What I am reading:
I just finished “Quarantine Comix: A Memoir of Life in Lockdown” by Rachel Smith While we may feel that things returned back to normal (Honestly, what is normal even?), the graphic novel was a reminder of the precariousness of why I am like this today. Were you or are you not forever changed by what the COVID19 pandemic brought out?
What I am watching:
Somehow, my husband stumbled upon an Indonesian soap opera on Hulu, which we decided to watch AND see through the end. It was a glimpse into a fellow Southeast Asian culture’s media world, which always tickles my former media planning/advertising brain. Of course, there were parallels. To us, it was another through-the-looking-glass world of Filipino soap opera, but in Bahasa instead of Tagalog or Taglish with a heavy dose of mosques instead of Catholic churches. Plus the circumstantial cultural tentpoles of parental dominance in adult children’s lives and decisions that means submission and obedience to the parents’ know-best dogma and the inescapable, often comic, involvement of household help in family affairs.
While it was overall a light hearted, dramedy of avoidable errors - a guy, who was already engaged to someone else, choosing to marry another because of the weight of his mother’s choice on him, there were surprisingly trigger, not safe for children, why was this even not edited out of the show moments. Specifically the explicit showing - a good minute or two (Which was even repeated in another episode’s preview!) of actual suicide.
It made me utterly uncomfortable, almost an admonition by the cultural powers that be, that any possible involvement with carnal passions outside of the veil of marriage that are haram or, in Catholic/Christian speak, sinful, can lead you to this debilitating, excommunicate-able shame and death by one’s own hands.
If you’d like to read more about tarot cards and their meanings, head on over to what I’ve written below:
Major Arcana
Minor Arcana