Breaking Bad Habits

I have watched Breaking Bad, but I did not make it a habit. I loved the first season, however there was one character who stressed me out too much and made the rest of the series impossible for me to view. My partner watched the whole series, most of it in back to back episodes. That’s how he prefers to watch series. He has a system and it is precise, intense and obsessive. He has a stellium in Virgo and Scorpio. Just like Walter White apparently.

For an intriguing take on Breaking Bad’s leading man’s astrological chart – Walter White: An Everyman for the Uranus/Pluto Age

My partner and Walter White do share certain traits. They are both self contained and in control of themselves. The person they present to the world is often underestimated by others because it appears harmless, and yet if you pay attention you can sense something lurking below the surface, a dark, dangerous and mysterious world. Just like Walter White, my partner is one of those people who could lead a double life and no one who knew who they were in one life would recognise them in the other life, nor would they be likely to equate the two people they were in their two lives. They are the sort of people who when their double lives collide into one others always say – But he was so quiet and polite… I can’t believe someone like him could do such a thing!

My partner is also an avid fan of Dexter. I liked the first series, and some of the second, but then I lost interest. My propensity to get bored of a series after a season drives my partner nuts. He likes to see things through to their end. To me the end is when and where I get bored.

Because of his passion for these series, I have asked my partner to let me know if when I am sleeping, or other times that we are apart, he is going out to be a serial killer or a drug kingpin. I like to be prepared for surprises, not that it would be a surprise. One of the things which drew me to him was that still water on the surface, lava bubbling and boiling underneath quality. I recognised myself in him. In many ways he is the male version of me, in others we are very different. I love his similarities and his differences.

I could have been a serial killer. I think I might have been if I had been a male. Is that sexist? Perhaps. But serial killers do seem to be male more often than female. However that statistic is based on serial killers who have been caught, maybe female serial killers are equal in number to male ones, they are just better at getting away with it. I would guess that the stats are correct. Men express their emotions more physically than women. Men are predominantly physical. Women are predominantly verbal. Women use words to kill rather than physical action.

And the character who embodies killing with words in Breaking Bad is Walter White’s wife. She is the reason I could not watch the show. Every time she appeared in a scene, I had to get up and leave the room. I wanted to kill her. She reminds me of my mother. So if I was a serial killer, I would be a stereotypical one. Killing people who remind me of my mother in an attempt to kill my mother over and over again.

Do my words shock you? See, women use words to express their emotions.

I believe in knowing my dark side (The Dark Passenger as Dexter calls it). Know your dark side, own it, be responsible for it, embrace it (in a passive way) and it has less hold over you. The darkness can inspire the light when it is brought into the conscious mind. I openly admit to it, and by doing so I expose it to the light and the inner shadows dissipate.

I’m not the only one who has fantasised about killing my mother. If you met her… I have watched her drive some of the calmest and kindest souls to rage and fury. She kills with words. She is relentless in her killing spree. Nag, nag, nag, nag, nag… on and on and on and on. She is also blameless, everything is everyone else’s fault and she informs everyone of their faults and flaws until they want to either kill themselves or kill her. Pick, pick, pick, pick, pick. She feels that it is her gift to point out to people what is wrong with them as she is perfect. She is completely insensitive and unsympathetic, with no empathy whatsoever. But she is very sensitive and the slightest remark from another can send her into a frenzy of hurt. Her ability to play the victim matches her ability to victimise others and then demand sympathy from them for what they did to her.

It’s strange… but my words are killing me. I write best when I smoke. When I don’t smoke, I can’t write. This has just dawned on me as I am cutting down on my smoking preparing to cut it out entirely. Will I lose my ability to write and share my words when I break that bad habit? Smoking has helped me to emerge from my self-imposed silence, to express much of my darkness and bring it into the light, which has helped me to resolve many issues. By releasing, I can let go and move on. Allowing the space to be filled by something less destructive and more constructive and creative.

Like my partner, and Walter White, I have a lot of Virgo and Scorpio in my natal chart. I am self contained and in control of myself. I too am still on the surface with lava boiling inside.

I always used to describe myself as a volcano, the kind which lies dormant for ages then one day… explodes. My explosions have been few and mild, perhaps because this volcano lies beneath the ocean, and the only effect of the blast is to send a tidal waves of emotion through my life washing away people who remind me of my mother and who treat me the way she did. She’s not dead, yet, but I talk about her mostly in past tense. I cut her out of my life years ago. She has returned recently. She has not changed a bit, but I have changed a lot.

I have for a long time been slowly working on breaking the bad habit of allowing people like my mother to behave the way they do with me. My mother trained me to accept this kind of treatment. To excuse her abuse, to not perceive it as abuse but as love, and to blame myself as she blamed me for what she did to me repeatedly. Bad habits die hard especially when you don’t perceive them as bad. She never perceives anything she does as bad. Nothing was ever her fault.

I attract people like my mother. Thankfully that is not the only type of person whom I attract. However they are the ones who trigger the volcanic emotions within me. My explosions and my containment of them can harm those in my life, like my partner, whom I do not want to harm. This has fuelled my ambition to sort myself out. If I am to harm anyone it is those who feel they can come into my life, take me over and treat me any way they please then accuse me of being the cause of it. My preferred method of harming them is to make myself repulsive to them so that they do not find me attractive.

My worst bad habit has been to hide who I am because my mother and people similar to her have made me feel that I had no right to exist as an individual, that I had to become and be who they wanted me to be to please them, and to make it acceptable to them that I exist… but even when I did become that person I was not who they wanted, did not please them and my existence continued to be unacceptable to them.

I have been a serial killer, regularly killing myself to be someone else. That spree has come to an end, I’m breaking the bad habit. I am determined to be myself, openly, uncesored… and then I will hopefully attract those who like me for who I am not who they want me to be. If they don’t like me, that’s their problem, making it my problem has been my problem for far too long and it has broken me repeatedly, now it’s its turn to break.

[A dream from Mars’ transit of my 12th – I dreamed that I was trying to dispose of three bin bags full of body parts. The disturbing part was trying to figure out when the bin collection day was, as I didn’t want the body parts sitting in the bins outside of my house. As I was trying to figure out the day, the bin collectors came and went and I got very angry with myself for being so muddle-headed.

My interpretation – I think those body parts belonged to me. They were from the versions of myself I create for other people to please them. I missed the bin collection because it is time for me to catch myself red-handed and face my crimes against myself. Time for me to be myself.]