Today’s tarot is Tarot in Wonderland.
It’s easier to read than the last wonderland one and the booklet is really fun because it explains upright as “Through the Looking Glass” and reversed as “Down the Rabbit Hole”.
Alas, the backs are asymmetrical…
Today’s deck was ALMOST The Artist Decoded but something started to feel off when I perused it and then I saw the word “Synthographer” being used. AKA people that use AI models and insist inc alling themselves artists.
As a photographer, “Synthographer” is especially insulting lemme tell you. The booklet also reeked more of techbro than hippie, which was interesting in a way.
Not happy with just that, discovering that detail about the deck happened at a very specific point of my day where it was especially aggravating.
Anyway, today’s reading (done with all cards upright because of the backs) felt like a reminder that I wasn’t doing too bad, that I’m a hard worker learning skills and to remember that I do it to provide for others.
A more than welcome reminder given the day I had.
Today’s lesson in the book continued with the suit of swords. It was an interesting progression to choose because it let the book explain in succession that Cups are the emotional mind, pentacles are the material mind, and now swords are the logical mind.
Tying one element with a specific gender still feels bleh because you can make arguments for how each traditional gender role applies to a specific element’s interpretation, but it’s whatever. I didn’t complain about the use of gender in Dune (I found it quaint, even) and I ain’t gonna start now.
Today was one of those days where I feel the knot of stress and despair in my throat, of everything just piling up.
It’s a familiar sensation to the point that it’s comforting in a messed up way. The listlessness, the constant deep breathing to recenter myself, the feeling in my chest like I’m constantly about to cry, the tingling in my shoulderblades that makes me wary my blood pressure is rising but there’s no left arm tingling so it’s fine…
Despite looking forward to it and even having a song ready to go, I had to postpone today’s singing lesson because I’m in the mental headspace where one appointment no matter the type is going to make me shout into a pillow.
Today was also one of those days also where posting anything on the Sukeban Twitter account made a bunch of people asking for Nirvana in rude ways come out which always tanks my mood massively, and considering I was already feeling so overwhelmed that I was considering if I had the mental space to go to singing lessons to begin with, it did not help at all.
(Two ranting paragraphs were deleted here because I wanna document my grievances but there was too much sensitive info).
Regardless, it pushed me into a bad state of mind. I’m not going to say two random comments online are enough to get me into that situation, but when you already feel sore and tired, any small push feels like it will destroy you.
(Paragraph deleted because it makes no sense without the context of the two deleted ones)
And I for one am tired of feeling like I’m always the one that needs or is EXPECTED to push against the current, like the current is never in my favor. (Paragraph and a half deleted)
“You should ask for help”. You see, I don’t like asking for help because the few times I’ve actually needed proper help have either resulted in being told to fuck off in the past or have ended with me somehow pulling double effort in more recent times.
I KNOW I’m being irrational, I’m perfectly aware, but I’ve also not had any positive reinforcement to validate that I’m being indeed just irrational.
And you wanna know how I know I’m being irrational? Nothing I say is directly correlated to my actual source of stress. I’m just in the sort of situation where the stress center of my brain is like “YOU WANT ME TO DEAL WITH WHAT?!” and then it starts showing me all the stuff already inside the room to show me why I’m asking for too much.
I will be fine, this is not the worse I’ve ever been, this is just the stress speaking. But the stress is a part of myself and I’ve learned to not neglect any part of myself, to listen to every section of me no matter how unsavory it might feel, no matter how moody or “too sensitive” people call me for that.
Because they’re all me, and they only want this flesh ship they’re riding to work at its best.
So because I was very clearly and evidently Not Okay today I tried walking for a bit. I did get the batteries for the stove (it would turn out I already had the batteries but they were out of sight ever so slightly) and a bunch of other knives I bought mainly out of curiosity arrived while I was having lunch. I also got a kitchen lighter just in case.
But in the end I went back home and just sank into my bed for like two or three hours. I wasn’t even napping I was just relishing in being in a dark room with no stimulus of any kind.
As usual, it’s very telling when I need to stop like that that things aren’t okay. Like needing to sit down when I was hanging out with E and K.
I spent the rest of my day carving wood, and I’ll be damned, it worked.
The thing is that it’s the sort of activity like drawing where you can do it while listenin to stuff, so I was able to fully tune out.
I tried making an infinity loop but it ended up a little bit more scuffed than I hoped, but it calmed me down in time for sleep time.
The next week is about to start and I’m trying to not let all the other pending tasks outside of the visa stuff hit me too hard.