We’re only a mere seven days in to 2018 and I feel nothing but a weight off my shoulders.

I didn’t realize how heavy the past year was weighing on me until the moment the ball dropped and I actually shed a few tears. It felt like letting go of all my pent-up issues from 2017 despite nothing changing but the time.

However, I soon realized that a change of the year doesn’t mean everything I experienced last year falls away. I ended up emotional by night on New Year’s Day. I was taken back because I felt liberated twelve hours earlier and now, here I am, in a pile of tears over the same shit that upset me most of last year.

I was holding on to a lot of anger.

I started to delete and block people who I didn’t want to follow me in to the new year yet I felt alone in my attempts to ‘free’ myself. I wasn’t freeing anyone. I was only separating myself further from connection with others.

The first two days were a constant push-and-pull of what I should be doing now that 2017 is over. I was excited for a fresh start, especially since I don’t have a job tying me down right now, but I quickly began to micro-manage my whole schedule and stress myself out. It wasn’t until I realized that I was creating my own stress that I began to ease a bit of the pressure.

I started reading Gabrielle Bernstein’s new book Judgment Detox and to be honest, I think I may be outgrowing her content.

Gabby was one of my favorite spiritual teachers of 2016 and most of 2017, but ever since I’ve been getting more in touch with my emotions, I’ve found myself turned off by her work. I still appreciate what she does because she helped me tremendously when I needed her, but it doesn’t resonate the same as it used to. I can only hope this means I’m growing my perspective.

 

One lesson that stuck out to me though was the idea of seeing the other person as you.

 

To summarize, when you find yourself in a situation that triggers you emotionally, instead of getting defensive, begin to put yourself in the other person’s shoes.

Most of the time, if we just take a step back, we can easily see why some people hold on to their opinions and beliefs so tightly.

In a Trump nation, a lot of us don’t exercise this enough – myself included.

I’m not going to get all political here, but let me say this. In the name of standing up for what is right, we judge profusely. We no longer see the humans on the opposite end as people but boulders between us and the things we want so desperately.

I’m twenty-one so my upbringing is easily going to be a lot different from someone who grew up in the 60’s or 70’s. I can’t attack people for beliefs they were raised on despite how outdated I may feel they are. Their human experience is different from mine and nothing I can say will change that.

Now, I’m not saying that if you’re gay or transgender to go and hug an anti-LGBT supporter and act as if all is well. We simply need to see that those who are out to hurt or take away from others must be in an extremely painful place themselves. No one who is happy or healthy would take away from others for the joy of it.

The same goes for murderers.

 

As Elle Woods would say, ‘Happy people just don’t kill their husbands.’

 

Only someone who is in such a dark place to take away from another could commit such a crime.

It’s (sometimes) easier to move past judging friends or family but when it comes to people with such a different viewpoint than us, we may find ourselves stuck in our defenses. There’s nothing wrong with this because again, our experience fully stems from how we were raised. However, our willingness to see the other person as us can lift burdens we didn’t even know we had.

With this knowledge, the judgments I was holding against people who hurt me began to lift. I knew deep down they never meant to hurt me, but this lesson was only a reiteration of it. I started to un-block and trust that if I am meant to heal these relationships, I will.

Two days ago, I was hit with an even larger bombshell.

 

I was selfish as hell.

 

Let me explain.

For Christmas, my mom bought me a book titled Astrology for the Soul by Jan Spiller. I thought it was just another astrology book full of information I could find online, however, I was shocked at what I discovered.

For 2018, one of my main goals is to learn more about astrology. I used to be such a skeptic because I never felt that aligned with being a Gemini, but once I began to dissect my birth chart last year, the pieces started to come together a bit more. I now see how much of a miracle it was that I was born in my exact situation. I was given the exact planet alignment, exact parents, and exact environment that my soul needed to be incarnated in to someone to learn the lessons I came down here to learn. It’s overwhelming when I think about it for too long.

Well, the other night, I was watching Sex and the City while cleaning up around my room. The urge to learn more astrology had just come about this day and when I went to my bookshelf, I saw Astrology for the Soul. I soon realized it wasn’t just an all-extensive book about astrology but a deep dissection of our Lunar Nodes.

I turned off Carrie and Big and began to dive in to my north and south node description – I’m a Libra/Aries.

The north node represents our karmic path and lessons we came down here to learn. The south node possesses the gifts we hold from previous lifetimes – the lessons we have already mastered.

 

Everything I thought I knew about myself went out the window.

 

In my mind, I was this intuitive person who had a knack for reading/helping others. I focused so much on myself to help others. I had a hard time getting close to people because I had given too much of myself in the past.

Nope. Wrong. Ctrl, Alt, Delete.

Turns out, I came in to this lifetime with the intent to stop focusing so much on myself and increase my ability to see through another’s eyes; to build a teamwork ethic, to give without expecting anything in return, and to stop expecting everyone to see things how I see them. A little ironic after I just went on for paragraphs about myself, but I swear, we’re getting to the point.

 

With my focus being so much on filling my own cup, I have been avoiding people altogether. The more I read, the more pissed yet understanding I became.

 

In my past lives, I lived as a warrior. I’ve been incarnated many times as people who needed to stand on their own and others were seen as the enemy. In war, other people were literally targets to me. So, when I came in to this life with a warrior mindset without a need for it, I ended up isolated. Even in my friendships, I never let myself get too close. I was always waiting for the ball to drop. My defenses never left me.

I also am prone to superficiality which is a trait of a Gemini I always bypassed. I thought, sure, I may enjoy doing my makeup and buying new things, but that’s gotta be a human thing. I’m here to enjoy life, aren’t I?

Well, not when I use my looks and things as a way to project this perfect image to other people. I’ve been hiding myself behind my vanity because I don’t want others to see who I really am. Unsurprisingly, being afraid to show my true self to others doesn’t help to build strong connections.

When it came to my belief about being able to ‘read others’, turns out, I’m just really good at making assumptions. When in war, you study your opponents from a distance. You never get up close with them until battle and you have to judge what they’re going to do based on what you would do if you were in their situation. Thing is, we can never fully know what goes on in another’s head. This is why we can become so outraged when someone does something to us we say we would never do in a million years. Their experience is different. Their thoughts are different.

This seems like I’m just ragging on myself at this point, right?

 

I could go on for a while, but I don’t want to air out all of my dirty laundry. The truth is, I never once considered any of these things to be qualities of me yet the more I read, everything began to make much more sense.

 

I am selfish at heart. I do focus on my own best interests, maybe a little too much at times. I never let people get too close to me because I don’t trust them nor do they follow the constructs I’ve built up for them to follow.

The book went on to say that while I possess all this resistance to relationships that creating partnerships was my sole reason for my current lifetime. The goal is to learn to let people be a part of my life because of who they are, not what they can offer me.

In my genetic makeup, I apparently do possess the qualities to do this – I just have to be willing.

While I’ve been facing a lot of hard truths due to this information, I also feel comforted by it.

If you’ve read any of my previous posts on love, you’ll know I’ve recognized I have an issue. I now realize that it isn’t anyone’s fault. My situation growing up and the relationships I experienced were conducted completely for me to learn this lesson. No one did me wrong or treated me in a way I shouldn’t have been treated. I needed the upsets to eventually come to all of these understandings.

Our lunar nodes essentially hold our life purpose, so if you’re looking for any clarity, I strongly recommend Astrology for the Soul. It is one of the few detailed books written on the nodes.

After realizing how much my nodes identified with me, I began to read the nodes of the people who have hurt me. I wanted to understand their motives behind it.

I became completely engulfed for over an hour.

 

It took seeing the other person as you to a whole other level.

 

Someone who I had once seen in a manipulative and selfish light soon became someone who had a lot of confidence issues. While my sole purpose is to find connection with others, they held the purpose of trying to understand who they are.

Initially as I read, this person’s analysis seemed completely unlike them. I started to disregard most of it, but I remembered how accurate mine had been. I held qualities I never knew I had and this person had only ever shown me parts of them.

The book painted a picture of someone who could get along with anyone and had a true knack for understanding people (a teacher, philosopher, or writer in a past life) but morphed who they were to be who everyone else needed.

 

I looked back at my patterns with this person and I never felt more horrible.

 

I saw the little signs that this was true. The double-texts, the need to please everyone else, etc. It all started to line up right in front of me.

My selfish nature had turned someone who was doing their best to be who I wanted into someone who didn’t fulfill my needs. I felt guilty for disregarding how they truly felt for so long. I thought I understood them but turns out, I only understood what I wanted to be true for myself.

All of this information is still fresh in my mind, so I haven’t acted on it much yet. I’m trying to process it all, but it feels incredible to be starting out this year with such a jolt of knowledge.

If I’ve learned anything over the past week, I know now that everyone has an intense internal war in their mind. The battles I thought someone else was facing were completely different from their true issues. Hell, even my own battles were completely flipped upside down.

Even the people who cause us the most pain could be nothing but a scared child inside. We will never know their truth, but approaching these people with compassion has to be our first step.

Reprimanding someone who is already hurting does nothing but hurt their psyche more; no solutions can be found in a war of words.

Despite how different all of our struggles may be, we all came down here to know ourselves. We do not exist to be carbon copies of each other’s opinions and issues but as a way to understand who we are separately.

 

We have to allow people the opportunity to discover who they are.

 

Forget about what we think is right because deep down, they know what is right.

Instead of trying to turn people into who I want them to be, I have to allow them to be their unapologetic selves. My discomfort with that has nothing to with them: that’s my issue. I can’t bring someone else down in the name of healing myself.

We’re all just doing the best we can and we have to honor where people are. The lessons we learn at one age may not hit someone else for another decade.

They have their own story.

And with that, we’ve got to let them write.