(Second in a series, first one can be found here.)

Another quote from SunShines:

"The internal strife roils and boils incessantly within you, and it usually is the worst when you're alone."

There's another astrology book out there, "Astrology For The Soul," that discusses the moon's nodes. Nodes are basically supposed to indicate (a) where you've come from in life (South Node) and (b) where you're supposed to be going (North Node). My North Node is in Libra, the sign of partnership, and my south is in Aries, the sign of going it alone. (My mother, incidentally, has the reverse going on. You see how well she's ah, learning the lesson of independence. Not.)

Now, the chapter on Libra North Node (which you can read in its entirety here) is very interesting, but also kind of infuriating in a way. It pretty much boils down to "In your past life, and still kinda in this one, you were a selfish arsehole to everyone you knew, so now you have to learn to be a Care Bear and magically intuit other people's needs." I am especially infuriated by her example of a guy who'd decided he didn't want more children who tells the girl he's dating this. The girl DOES want children and then pretty much lies to herself/to him by saying she doesn't either (even though she knows she does). He figures "okay, cool," they get married, he gets a vasectomy...and then she leaves him to find a babydaddy. Here's what pisses me off: Jan Spiller is all, "He should have known that she really did want children after all, so it's his fault the marriage broke up." Excuse me?! He stated what he wanted, she didn't. How the hell was he supposed to know that she was lying? Yeah, so astrology is in the hippie-dippie realm, but not everyone's a dang psychic here. So that annoys me. It's not like this dude acted like I did when I was young and stoopid and assumed that anyone who wanted to be with me wouldn't see me as a great mommy- this dude frigging asked first.

Michael Lutin to some degree covers the same message (not so much the magical intuition, but definitely the Care Bear, "wind beneath someone else's wings" shite), but he actually comes up with a better reason for why someone should be seeking out other people: the ugly voices in your head.

"You can become totally obsessed with yourself. Who you are. What you are. How you look."

"You've said so many horrible things to yourself when you've looked in the mirror."

"So for all your talk about how you enjoy being alone, you're not all that nice to yourself when you are by yourself. You can be downright cruel, in fact. One has to wonder what kind of jollies you get from hanging out with yourself if half the time you're hanging yourself."

"In you, what appears to be self-effacing and humble can actually be a murderous vengeance on the self, an unyielding self-loathing that will be satisfied with nothing less than total annihilation. When you start ragging on yourself the cruelty is unmatched... You'll try every possible way to prove to yourself and everyone else that you're a mean, miserable, worthless piece of garbage they'd be better off without. You cover it up so well. Everybody would think you thought you were the greatest. They'd never know you had such a low opinion of yourself. The aim of spiritual evolution may indeed be the transcendance of self. It is not achieved, however, by tearing yourself apart and calling yourself names when you're alone."

I especially can't deny the bit about total annhilation. That is very true about me. I always think, "if I could just completely kill off my will to rebel, maybe THEN I'd be the person everyone needs and wants me to be. If I could just be an empty shell of obedience, they'd all be happy with me."

Yeah, that's a pretty nasty thing to think, but... my inability to conform to the Stepford Family is such a fucking problem for me that never goes away.

Why do I have to rearrange the world to fit me? Wouldn't it just be easier to rearrange me to fit the world? Especially when I don't have control over the world and should have far more control over me? Why can't I just be what everyone else wants instead of having to beat them over the head with sticks to accept me as I am- and then they still don't anyway? Why can't I bloody well fit into their box, cut off a few body parts so they can close the lid, and be good with that?

In short, why do I have to be the family weirdo?

My shrink said that I am not as weird as I think I am. True enough, anyone in Berkeley can out-weird my ass. But when you grow up in the burbs, surrounded by people who are either Stepford or trying desperately to be Stepford, you're pretty fucking weird. That's why I moved here, because except for being OMGSINGLE at my age, I'm "normal enough" in this region.

When I am alone, I am a master at distraction. When I'm home, I'm catching up on TV/DVD's, surfing the net, crafting...probably all at the same time. Anything to not leave my mind idle and wandering down the path of bad thoughts, really, which it is wont to do when I am walking down the street without significant distraction like an iPod. I've had the "Why can't you just do what I want?" voice yelling at my in my head for bloody ever.

I can't help but think: if I'd grown up on the Island of the Blue Dolphins or something and had no people around to bitch me out for not being what they want, would I still have had the shitty voice in my head? Was that something I was born with no matter what, or was it installed?

Michael Lutin's solution to the Ugly Voice In The Head problem is this:

"Being together erases your issues, so the more you improve the life of another person, the more your life moves up a notch."

I dunno about that erasing issues thing. I think that's a bit much. I can see him saying it for the (a) distraction level- human beings as equivalent of television for entertainment, and/or (b) the fuzzy-wuzzy wuv factor. But on the other hand, relationships do also bring on yet another chorus of "Why can't you be what I want?", with the other person having a problem with things that don't bother you. That's something I distinctly don't like in relationships. Yeah, give me more people to tell me I suck! Yeah, I needed that! We were running low on the crazy!

Course, I probably did that to Dave all the fucking time ("Why can't you get a job like everyone else?"), so I can't say I'm immune from doing that myself.

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