So, getting back to the Tarot reading… Lorenzo looked at the face-down cards that all but covered the coffee table. He swung his pendulum over them, muttering again. Then, he looked at me.
“There’s a man in your past who has done you a lot of harm.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Who is it?”
“Oh, well, I don’t know… there have been so many.”
“No, just one.”
I thought for a while.
“Well, I guess I could narrow it down to two.”
“What are their names?”
Alright, let’s start with the one who took my virginity in a date rape and then continued to seduce and alternatively abandon me for the next eight years…
“Mike.”
He swung his pendulum over the cards.
“No. It’s not him. Who’s the other one?”
Aha, then it would come down to the artist who befriended and studied women so he would know them from the inside out and make himself out to be their perfect match, manipulating them down to their most vulnerable state of being, which is precisely when he would dump them and turn his previous admiration into cruel abuse, knowing just which buttons to push to cause the most damage, while still trying to keep them as “friends” and occasional bed partners. That one? The last man I ever allowed myself to be vulnerable with… eight years ago?
“Scott.”
Swinging, mumbling.
“That’s him.”
I admitted to Lorenzo that I had a hell of a lot of anger against Scott. So much so, in fact, that the words
“I hate you, Scott,” still came tumbling out of my lips several times a day, especially when I was taking a dump. How’s that for symbolism?
Lorenzo, of course, advised me that my hatred was harming me, long after Scott had ceased to be in my life. He told me that I had to let go and to forgive. That was predictable enough. It’s what everyone says about those situations, isn’t it?
“Easy for you to say. How do I do that?”
“Your words have power. Change what you say. When you think of Scott, instead of saying I hate you, say ‘Pobrecito.’ (poor thing).”
“Umm, change the mantra, huh?”
“Exactamente.”
For a mantra was exactly what it had gotten to be. I really didn’t spend that much time consciously thinking about him, but those words had become so ingrained in my mind, that they came flying out at the slightest squeeze of the bowels, so to speak. So, I decided to try it. And I did. I had to consciously stop myself when I caught those words coming out of my mouth (yes, they came out aloud!).
“Poor Scott. Poor, poor Scott.” At first, I wondered if it weren’t a bit condescending, but after awhile, it became,
“Poor Scott for having so much of my negative energy directed at him for so long.” And, “Poor me for being so attached to this negative energy.”
It wasn’t long before I realized that those words had pretty much stopped coming out of my mouth. That really amazed me, because I thought, after so many years of repeating my hate mantra, it was going to take at least as long to replace it with something else. But it didn’t. To this day, it’s only come up a couple of times, and I always catch it and replace it with the new mantra.
And as an added side effect, I realized that, without even trying, I managed to eliminate another daily, and even more damaging, mantra from my repertoire, and that one was,
“I hate myself,” also spoken out loud at frequent intervals, usually when I was embarrassed about something… and it didn’t have to be anything big, either. I’ve always been able to tolerate a lot from other people and accept their human frailties and weaknesses, but my own? Nope. My mistakes, no matter how minor, were worthy of hatred.
I once read that the more we perform a certain activity or think a certain thought, the more it literally becomes engraved in our brains. The synapses carve out a path in the gray matter or something like that. And the point that this person was making, was that, so often we choose to repeat behaviors that are bad for us, like eating the wrong foods or wallowing in anger or self-pity. Why, he’d asked, couldn’t we invest the same energy into eating healthy foods and smiling or thinking positive thoughts? Either way, it’s just a matter of habit, and we can choose which habits we want to form.
So, for now, I’m trying to eliminate the negative mantras, and replace them with something positive. So far, I think it’s working.
Along the same lines of relationships between men and women, Lorenzo asked me if I already had my job here.
“Not here,” I said. “In Prague.”
“But you already have your job?”
“Yes.”
“During this next year, a man is going to come into your life, from your job, who is going to be very pretencioso. (someone who is really going to try to start something romantic or sexual with me). But you’re not going to be interested in him. You’re going to see him for what he is, and you won’t want anything to do with him. You’re going to have to put him in his place. After that, another man will come into your life, and this will be the one for you.”
Well, to tell you the truth, I was a little disappointed that Lorenzo was getting into predicting romantic encounters. It’s so cliché, isn’t it? I’ll just take that one with a grain of salt. But, of course, if it does happen, you will be the first to know, as usual.
Well, dearies, I have one more story to tell from this tarot reading (although I’m sure there’s a lot more that I’ve forgotten about… there were a hell of a lot of cards on that table). And the story that I have for you next is about the most important thing that came out of this tarot reading, so check back in a day or two!
