Mars/Chiron – Courage in the Wound

I had this great idea last night as I was drifting off to sleep. I don’t know if it was really a great idea, it just felt like one. Have you ever had one of those?

My being was suddenly energised, raring to go go go. This is amazing, Ursula, do it do it do it!!!!

For a moment I almost got up and acted on it. But then I convinced myself to stay put and drift off in dreams.

If the idea was worth doing, I would remember it in the morning and could do it then. Sleep now…

My nickname of Ursula was given to me by someone who was struck by how much I love to sleep and look like a hibernating bear when I do. I once slept soundly for hours on a concrete floor curled up under a table in a printing factory which was in the process of printing stuff very loudly.

Figure things out later.

Besides ideas which seem to be great late at night are often terrible ideas when looked at in the light of day. Why did I think that was a good idea… blech! That’s just so many layers of bad onion!

That incident reminded me of all the times in the long distant past when I would feel more alive alone at night than I ever did during the day with others around.

It also reminded me of all those nights in the past when the only way I could get to sleep was by creating stories for myself, in imagery in the mind… similar to a film. I guess it was a bit like starting a dream while awake to encourage the psyche to go there.

Recently I’ve been having many experiences of being reminded of myself in the distant past. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I’ll be turning 50 years old soon.

Although I’ve never paid much mind to my age and what it means… except when someone else makes a point of it and I go hmmmm or I do something which is stereotypical for my age and go hmmmm.

As I often do when puzzled by myself, I decided to check my natal chart and see if there was anything going on there, a transit maybe, which was stimulating this experience.

I noticed that transiting Mars is conjunct transiting Chiron, which means they’re both conjunct my natal Chiron in Pisces in the 7th house of relationship.

excerpt via A Place In Space: Chiron – The Healing Pathway to Personal and Global Reconciliation

Which struck a chord, as one of the things I’ve been reminded of is how I used to regularly fantasise about falling in love, and having someone fall in love with me (yes, I realise this is probably a transiting Venus thing… but I’m going this way instead).

Those fantasies were always clearly fantasies to me as they often took place in those imaginary dream films I used to create for myself to send myself to sleep. Sometimes I was a pirate in pirate times, sometimes I was a spy, sometimes I was a swashbuckling musketeer… you catch my dreamy drift.

I have natal Moon in Virgo, so my real life love life has been rather virginal. I’ve only ever been in love once. I was about 28 when it happened, it took me by surprise because I was certain I’d never go there and do that by then – in fact it happened shortly after I made that certainty a conscious bullet point. I’m still with the person I feel in love with, still learning about love with them.

And I’ve decided that should our love not last until I die, I won’t bother doing the love thing again because I’ve been there, done that, and once is more than enough for me. It’s frigging exhausting and I’m lazy (that is minutely true, but it’s not really that so much as… even with a vivid imagination I really can’t imagine loving anyone else).

Recalling my fantasy versions of being in love and comparing them to a real life experience of being in love… the real life version is much more interesting.

The fantasy versions were more dramatic in a fictional manner – in one of the spy stories I was in a plane crash in the middle of the Indian Ocean, I miraculously survived while everyone else on board perished, but I had a case of amnesia (like the trope in K dramas). I forgot that I was a spy and what my mission had been, but as coincidence would have it I ended up infiltrating the place I was supposed to and getting very close to my target.

That particular story went on for months, and I got so involved in it that I spent my days restlessly waiting for night to come so I could continue my nocturnal adventure. Real people and reality was boring compared to fantasy.

There’s one particular fantasy lover whom I have never forgotten… probably because my partner is strangely similar, except also very different. My partner is so much better and not just because he’s real.

He can’t be controlled by my psyche, that’s definitely a plus. I can’t manipulate him, make him be, do or say what I want him to for the sake of my fantasy of love. And that is a very good thing… even if occasionally it’s infuriating because he’s so rebellious. I’m the rebel, how dare he be a rebel too… and yet that’s one of the many millions of reasons I adore him.

Shortly after we got together, I introduced him to my parents. Typical Capricorn move… although in my case it was not one of respecting family because my parents were narcissists, full on narcissists not just slightly narcissistic. Respecting them required killing yourself off on a regular basis, but then having to resurrect yourself because they needed you for something.

Nope, it was one of those testing the mettle of other people to see what they were made of typical Capricorn Sun moves.

When you meet people, they usually tend to show you their best bits first. Those who are showing you their worst bits first are probably Scorpios testing you… or just doing it for fun to amuse themselves.

Capricorns tend to be practical even if they’re crazy and weird like me. Underneath my disorderly dysfunctioning, and fantastical fantasising, I’m very practical. So I test people to see what’s behind the facade they’re showing me (that’s also something those who grow up with narcissist parents tend to do too).

You look good, you sound good, you do good, but what’s your dark side like, because that’s the three-headed puppy who is truly worth knowing when it comes to a relationship. Can your darkness deal with my darkness or will it melt into a puddle of screaming fear.

After 20+ years together, I reckon I fell in love with someone who is a keeper, who is as good as he seems, whose darkness may actually be darker than mine, and I can stop testing him now.

When I introduced him to my parents, they both brought out their narcissist A game shenanigans to destroy our budding relationships, make him run away and keep me isolated, protected and sheltered from that horrible ghastly weakness known as love.

Everything they did rolled off his back with a shrug of his strong shoulders. Up until him, I’d never met anyone who was immune to their particular brand of charm and harm. That was impressive. And he did it so easily and effortlessly.

Eventual I learned how to do that too from him. I’ve learned a lot from him about many things, about myself, about him, about life, about relationships and what truly matters. I’m still learning… which to me is more important than any other aspect of relationship because learning is exciting and keeps the vital juices flowing.

Last week we finished watching a truly brilliant K drama – Master’s Sun. It has a very strong female lead, but she isn’t doing the obvious in strength, she’s not going around kicking male ass (is that really the sign of a strong female lead? Maybe but… there’s far more to it than that), she’s not making billions all on her lonesome, she’s not really doing anything which modern society would approve of as a strong female real role model.

She’s just being herself… and being true to herself, even though everyone, male and female, disapproves of her for one reason or another. And no one can understand why the male lead likes her, even he doesn’t get it… until he does. Even she doesn’t get it… until she does.

It’s an awesome story of two individuals learning from their relationship to relate better to themselves which helps them to relate better to each other and others and life.

To me, that’s the ideal of a relationship… and the real of it too.

If I was still in my old fantasy mode, the male lead would definitely have become a source of inspiration for a fantasy love. He reminds me so much of my partner…. sigh, that again! Ha!

For my 50th birthday, I gave some loose guidelines for anyone who wanted to buy me a gift – something age-inappropriate, silly, funny, fun.

I really don’t care if people forget my birthday, shit I forget it why should others have to remember… and up until recently gifts made me anxious, nervous, behave erratically, treat them like explosive devices.

My partner got me a child-sized rocking horse from a local junk shop.

O

M

G

He also got me for X-Mas a Clint Eastwood western fancy dress outfit. SQEEE! It’s soooo inappropriate on so many levels!!!!

Earlier I was browsing through a few posts written by astrologers and astrology buffs about Mars conjunct Chiron.

One post… I gave up reading because it was too long and rambling (Oh, the irony!). From what I could understand, because they’d associated Mars/Chiron with “cowardice” (using that word in the title too) many people had objected to it. So they’d added a trigger warning plus a whole new endless intro to the post which was really just a long objection to the objections of others – that’s a very Chiron type of thing and I guess it’s a very Mars/Chiron type of thing too.

If you have issues (and who doesn’t) and you’re a blogger… even if you don’t consciously blog about your issues, your issues will surface in your posts and/or in the way others react to your posts.

If you want to avoid your Chiron wound… don’t blog or do any type of social media, especially if your Chiron is in the 7th house of relationships with others.

But if you want to find the healing in the wound, figure things out, figure yourself, your relationships, others, out… blogging is totally the way to go.

It takes courage (Mars) to face our wounds/issues (Chiron)… our wounds can be aggressive (Mars/Chiron), and we may cling to our issues with fierce determination, we may even fight the healing because… who do we become without the identifier of our wound.

While thinking about what I had been reading, and blending it with my reasons for looking Mars/Chiron up, and recent reminding stuff…

I remembered when I was a child, and also later on in fantasies, how I would act when I got wounded in games, or in my waking dreams…

I once got fatally shot in an actual dream-dream (I did that on purpose… you won’t understand this aside unless you’ve read a previous post), and spent the rest of the dream bleeding to death while speeding around on a motorcycle (I don’t drive in RL) trying to save my brother (I’m an only child in RL) from whoever had shot me… I did eventually die, and then I woke up.

I’m one of those irritating people who is hard to kill in fantasy. I’m sort also hard to kill in reality… my parents did try to psychologically kill me off, I tried to kill myself off in many ways, other people have tried to ignore me to death.

But I’m still here for now.

Astrologically I give credit to some tough natal placements, and some really stubborn a-hole aspects which just keep me going. They’re great when life gives you narcissists… but they’re also not so great when you’re trying to heal your internal wounds and are doggedly not cooperating because those wounds are in many ways what’s keeping you alive and going.

Took me until now really to let the healing emerge from the wounding.

Wounds can make you become a coward (totally talking from experience here… I’ve been a very cowardly custard for a significant portion of my life), but… don’t get too triggered by thinking someone is accusing you of cowardice or being a coward, cowards have a kind of courage which courageous people lack. Cowards tend to cling to life in a way that those who are brave don’t… and it takes courage to do that.

Best fantasy series all about a coward who lives to run away another day is the completely politically incorrect Flashman by George Macdonald Fraser.

Just do your thing, live your story, and when dealing with others take a moment to realise that they too are doing their thing and living their story – sometimes we have a role in theirs and they have a role in ours, but our story is ours and theirs is theirs, we have to take the lead in ours and they do that in theirs.

And now I’m going to press publish on this and file it under – just another long ramble about what exactly I don’t know but I think I may have learned a little something from it along the way.

Over to you!

Featured image is by E. W. Kemble