I don’t really believe in tarot. I have a science degree, and I’ve gone to church my whole life, both experiences that discourage the use of tarot. I do believe in making meaning from signs and symbols, even if there is no divine or otherworldly influence underneath it all. It gives me something to write about.
If I am not required to think about a situation related to myself, I won’t. I might rant about it, but as soon as I am alone, in a place where work can be done, I won’t touch it.
My psychologist said this is a skill I learned as a child that no longer serves its purpose. Regardless, I think this is why I purchased tarot cards. Maybe it feels as if it takes the pressure off me to do the hard work of think even though it is always me looking at a card, assigning meaning, applying it to my situation.
My art teacher would be proud of how well I pull meaning from pictures these days.
I am faced currently with one of my most significant academic failures in a long time. I don’t know how to resolve it, or even if a resolution exists that leaves me even near the place I would be without it.
It wasn’t from lack of work or dedication. Completely missing from my memory is the block of time during which I failed to submit a finished assignment. It’s just gone.
This scares me because I haven’t lost time in such a way since what I told my psychologist were ‘my proper mad days‘.
When I wouldn’t sleep and would disappear for hours. I would forget how I ended up in places, doing tasks I didn’t remember starting. It was terrible, and I am much better now.
But naturally, I am afraid. Always a pessimist, a single bad day must always represent a descent all the way back to the proper mad days, the loss of everything I have worked so hard for, the crushing emptiness that discoloured my late teens and early twenties.
I cried and then told myself I didn’t care and that none of it mattered. Then I screamed, likely disturbing my long suffering neighbours.
Eventually, I pulled some tarot cards because after all the emails have been written, and desperate prayers prayed, what more can you do?
I am not good at tarot; my reading skills equate to those you’d acquire from reading the back of a tarot themed cereal box. I probably read it wrong, but it meant something to me, and in a way I figure thats what its all about.
“You have two paths,” they tell me.
(Mostly because I used a fork in the road spread).
“You could respond how you always do, do what you expect of yourself, walk the well-worn paths you grew up on”
Fair. This is the thing I am good at. I am stubborn in self-destruction.
The Eight of Swords that follow tells me the outcome is self-imposed limitation and a nice heavy dose of a victim mentality.
At this point, I laugh out loud in my empty flat.
The second path asks me, “what are you doing and is it worth it?”
Yes.
“Then don’t give up.
Protect what you have worked for and fight for it. And for the love of god, swallow your pride.”
Everyone who cares about me has said this for years, and maybe why this is why I see this story when I am reading cards.
Either way, I think the cards just told me to put on my big girl pants and suck it up.
britts amelia. 