Who Comes First – Me or You or Everyone Else?

Yesterday I was finishing off some DIY in the sitting room. Don’t award me a halo. I was fixing a mess I’d made this Summer while trying to find the point of entry of swarming ants – the third time this happened I took out a hammer.

My partner was in the room playing Fortnite. This is how he relaxes. To an observer it doesn’t seem all that relaxing since there’s a lot of grumbling, shouting and swearing, and occasionally the controller gets thrown on the floor.

Yesterday he was getting particularly annoyed with another player who was supposed to be on his team but kept killing him (known in gameplay as a Toxic Player – Someone in a game that is a horrible teammate and player but thinks they are a fucking genius and not the reason the team is losing – def. from Urban Dictionary).

“Why do people like this exist!?!” he exclaimed in frustration before quitting the game and going out to light a bonfire.

I didn’t try to answer my partner’s question because it wasn’t really a question. And at the time he certainly didn’t want or need one of my long-winded philosophical musings on why people like that exist.

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image and words by Amrit Brar

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I’ve asked that question fairly often throughout my life. Sometimes in the same way that my partner asked it – in extreme frustration when once again I’d been metaphorically killed by someone who was supposed to be on my team.

I’ve come up with many different answers to that question over the years, including the one where I’ve wondered if perhaps people like that exist because people like me exist.

There are many ways of interpreting a statement like – people like that exist because people like me exist.

The way I used to use it most often was – If I didn’t exist then others wouldn’t have to be like that. I saw myself as the problem, the cause of an effect, a negative presence which was infecting positive people, and the solution was for me to cease to exist.

I didn’t come up with that all on my own. I grew up with narcissist parents who regularly blamed me for their misery – their lives and relationship was peachy and perfect until I messed it all up by being born, and continued to do so by continuing to exist.

Of course that was all narcissistic BS (you are always the negative to a narcissist’s view of themselves as the positive), but I didn’t know that during those years when it worked its way into my psyche and took root.

Many of my difficulties with life on Human Earth stem from that seed which took root and grew and grew, spreading and spreading.

It caused plenty of problems for my relationship with my partner. I just couldn’t understand why he loved me or wanted to be with me. I was certain that he’d be healthier, happier, better off without me.

I saw myself as some sort of curse and cursed being.

Although it didn’t feel or appear to me at all like it was… it was egomania. It was unhealthy narcissism – while I didn’t view myself as the best of the best, and instead I saw myself as the worst of the worst, that still made me narcissitically ‘special’.

But why?

Why did someone like me exist?

Most of us ask something along these lines at some point in our journey of existence.

There are multitudinous answers to a question like that, and numerous ways to approach finding your own answer.

One of the ways I find most intriguing and interesting is Astrology. Yes, yes, yes, I know it’s pseudoscience and other intellectual sounding yadda yadda against it, please stop trying to save me from my own stupidity and just do what you can actually do (that’s more logical, no?).

Here’s my natal chart with transits of the moment (generated by Astrodienst):

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I’ve never had my chart read by an astrologer.

But I have had an incorrect version of my natal chart read by a few different astrologers (I had my time of birth wrong, I thought it was AM but it was actually PM). Those experiences happened during a period in my life when I was desperate to have someone else tell me who I am, why I am, why am I, and what should I do with myself while I’m here, what’s the point of me, what’s my purpose.

My correct natal chart above shows that I’m the sort of person who should not be going around asking other people to tell me who I am, etc. This can mainly be seen in the red lines (hard aspects) connecting the 1st house of self and the 7th house of others (personal relationships). It also shows that I’m likely to do exactly that until I figure out for myself the hard way that I should stop doing that kind of activity (but… but… but… NO!). This can be seen in Chiron conjunct North Node in the 7th, opposing Uranus and Pluto (and SN) in the 1st (there’s other stuff too but… NO!).

Recently I’ve been reading up quite a bit on the Nodes – they’re hypothetical points or something like that. They’re considered to be Karmic points – past karma versus present karmic lessons = possible future karma if… The write-ups are fascinating to read as those doing the write-ups rarely if ever reveal their own astro… when they do it makes what they’re saying more interesting and informative.

How much of an astrologer’s (or astrology enthusiast’s) interpretation is based on their own natal astro? I reckon that no one can escape their own bias… so an astrologer writing about astrology is basically at some level living out their own astro with their interpretations whether they admit to it or are consciously aware of it or not. That’s why I like astrologers like Elsa from Elsa Elsa, who bravely share their own astro. She can be frigging annoying at times but… is that her or is that me, is that her astro or my astro or our astro combined and reacting, at least with her you can contrast and compare, figure things out for yourself.

Now that transiting Uranus is in Taurus, which many astrologers view as a compliment to transiting Pluto in Capricorn = systems need to be radically restructured, it may be time for Astrology and astrologers to take an Uranian leap of faith in their own systems.

We all need to do a bit of that – test our theories out in real time. Are we really who we say we are, are others who we really think they are, etc?

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One of the repeated reasons why I shouldn’t ask other people to tell me who I am is because other people don’t tend to perceive me as I perceive myself – this is valid for all of us, we perceive ourselves from the inside out, while others perceive us from the outside in (or more exactly they perceive us through the filter of their inside out looking at our outside in – and we do the same with other people).

One of the things about me which provoked my mother to continuously pick on me (pick, pick, pick, pick, pick – was one of my ‘nicknames’ for her behaviour. She did this with everyone and everything, even herself… her doing it to herself was partly why she did it with everyone and everything) was, according to her, that I was too confident. She would justify her picking on me by saying that it was for my own good, my over-confidence would get me hurt and she was attempting to stop me from being hurt by… hurting me (that’s narcissist logic for you). But of course she didn’t see her hurting me as her hurting me at all. She would never hurt anyone!

She would also be provoked into attacking me by what to her looked like my invulnerability to being hurt.

I wasn’t invulnerable to being hurt. I wasn’t overly confident either. And she would have noticed that about me if she hadn’t been blinded by herself, her inside out, projected everywhere and onto everyone.

I was one of those – Why do people like this exist – for her.

For me she was one of those people who sees me but doesn’t see me at all. I am there but not there. Visible yet invisible. I don’t exist as I am, I am whoever they have decided that I am and their version of me is the correct one, and it has to be picked apart because it is annoying to them, it hurts them, provokes them (all of this can be seen in my natal chart, particularly with regards to Pluto’s placement and aspects – Pluto hides what it touches).

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excerpt from – Pluto and Me: The Two Great Invisibles by Jeremy Neal

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And yet a part of them wants to be who they see when they look at you – because it’s what they’ve disowned of themselves which is seeking to be integrated, reintegrated.

Whenever you meet a – Why do people like this exist – it’s worth asking yourself – Is that a part of me that I am meeting in someone else?

It can be a tricky puzzle to solve.

Throughout my life I’ve attracted many people who have reminded me of my mother, who have behaved as she did with me, and have left me shouting in frustration: “Why do people like this exist!?!”

With my mother I tried repeatedly to get through to her that I wasn’t who she thought I was. But she was very certain that her version of the reality of me was the only one which existed.

When I met my partner, my mother insisted (by having a tantrum) that my partner take her out to dinner without me so that she could reveal to him who I really was (someone awful who he should get away from ASAP). She particularly wanted him to know about my ‘black moods’ (I don’t think it ever occurred to her that those were a result of her tantrums, because to her her tantrums were my fault or someone else’s, like my father’s, fault – the buck was always on the move).

She was indignantly furious that he hadn’t asked her, the expert on me, about me.

After their tete-a-tete dinner he was also rather indignant and furious in a calm and focused non-tantrum-throwing manner… that she had talked to him about me the way that she had.

Her plan to separate us and keep me all to herself (even though I was such a burden to her and so awful) to protect me from being deeply hurt by love (her justification for what she was doing) backfired.

My mother didn’t like my partner mainly because he was not impressed by her, and was also not intimated by her. His natal chart has a tight stellium of Sun/Mercury/Uranus/Pluto in Virgo. He is very thoughtful and considerate – but beware of the fury of a patient (and acutely observant) man.

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For many years I wondered if perhaps my mother was right about me – sometimes who other people think we are is closer to the truth of who we are than who we think we are. Just think of narcissists… and your opinion of the ones you know versus their opinion of themselves, whose opinion is closer to the truth of who they really are?

The perspectives others have of us can be informative, and they can also be how misinformation about us gets spread far and wide.

For a long while in my life I tried to not be the person who other people (mainly my mother, and her minions, but also my father and his minions) kept telling me that I was. So basically what I was doing was trying not to be who I wasn’t already. I could have just stopped trying to be anyone or anything and just been myself, but being myself was a confusing matter by then – I’d lost track of who I was, and when I was in tune with it, it felt out of sync with the world and the people in it around me.

These days I don’t tend to attract people like my mother as often as I used to. Have I solved that ‘problem’ or simply gone into hiding from it? Like hiding from something which will seek you out and find you like a heat-seeking missile ever worked before… but maybe this time, yeah!?!

The answer may lie within the transits which my natal chart is currently and has recently been undergoing – there’s a fair amount of Saturn-related activity in my chart.

My bouncebackability (Uranus conjunct Jupiter… just when I think I’m not only down but totally dead this time…

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I pop back up and shout Fighting (Hwaiting)!!!) took a big hit via a square from transiting Saturn at the end of 2017/beginning of 2018 which is still active. But transiting Pluto has also been restructuring my natal Saturn (which squares natal Sun = a constant case of the never good enoughs, the you-sucks, and the you’d be better off deads, Mork calling Grim Reaper, come in Grim Reaper).

Ooh! Which reminds me that I watched – Bleach – the other night and while it is a bit of a mess, it’s also a fun kind of mess. It’s one of those films which, imo, captures astrological (and archetypal) concepts. The main character undergoes a very Pluto experience, and is in some ways the embodiment of the Pluto in the 1st placement in all its glory, gory, and ultimately humbling aspects.

Now that I’m older, Saturn-related stuff is kind of almost fun (yeah, yeah, keep telling yourself that!). Do not take me with you to a funeral (including my own) unless you want someone to be inappropriate (gallows humour is never too soon, is it?). I am learning to curb my weird and freakish enthusiasm… a bit… but, frankly, without it I fall into an intensely serious hole from which I’m not sure I really want out. There’s something about being deadly serious which… at the very least keeps others away from you so you have time to spend with yourself to get to know yourself, witch warts and all.

Someone on Twitter, back in the day when I actually tweeted, said via tweet that what they liked about me was that I shared openly the black tar inside of me. I don’t know what they were talking about, but I sort of do.

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I share fairly openly and sometimes seemingly brazenly (probably due to natal Mars in Scorpio in the 3rd house of communication) what is often kept hidden by wiser, saner, and more socially acceptable types.

This has at times made me into a sort of a dirty little secret for others… if you read me but don’t want anyone to know you do that kind of thing, then… that’s okay. I don’t write posts to be popular, to get Likes and Shares, to make money, to sell something or myself. Mainly I write posts to get something out of my system and see it when it’s out of the inner system – some things I’ve written have helped me to change my system, bit by tiny bit.

If you look at my natal astro you’ll see that the out there in public houses (9th, 10th, 11th) of my chart are untenanted. Unless you count dark horses like Lilith in my 10th (square Pluto) and Orcus in my 11th (opposition Sun, Square Saturn).

What does that mean? I’ve been investigating and rethinking the whole untenanted/empty houses thing… with some hmmmm results thus far. Those empty areas are the stuff I’ve chased after but have never been able to catch – Why? Why do we do that? Why do we chase after things and people who run away from us, often ignoring things and people who are there for us, we have those (we could lose those while chasing after what and who we don’t have and may never have)?

Every now and then I’ve had an opportunity to catch what I’ve been chasing for years… and recoiled from reaching out to grasp and grab it as though it was diseased and infectious, and I didn’t want that infection because it would kill off what I truly valued.

Being human is so frustratingly complicated and complex!

The 4th house of family, foundation, roots, etc is also empty in my chart (unless you include asteroids, and then it gets busy), which I kind of see as giving me nothing and everything (being and nothingness) as roots but not roots all at once.

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image and words by Amrit Brar

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The shape of my chart based on placements and aspects looks like a bowl… into which stuff pours, sloshes around, then seeps, leaks or overflows out.

Any questions?

Any answers?

Please note: I am going to read what you write and think and rethink about it. I do reply to comments… you have been warned.