Okay, so I said I wasn’t going to blog about it anymore, but I am, because today I took the day off and took a little day trip to clear my head just in case anything triggered me, and you know what?

It didn’t.

And now I would like the world to think of me as it would any single 40-something alone in the middle of a pandemic.

Rick has been dead for six months. This is the day that I determined would be the day that I formally bury him in the graveyard of my mind.

I’m not going to forget. I’m not going to never ruminate over it in my mind the way we all do with past relationships, never not assure myself that I wasn’t the bad guy or whatever other exercise we all engage in when we think about the past.

I’m just not going to identify with it. I’m not going to allow myself to be identified by it. I’m not going to answer a gentle and knowing “how are you doing these days with everything?” with the same hesitance and hushed tones as the asker.

I went to Starved Rock State Park today.

I wasn’t going to do a weekend getaway because that would be like celebrating, and this isn’t celebrating so much as observing or rather initiating into a new chapter of my life, and I haven’t been hiking or to a state park in years.

I slept in this morning and decided to shower, dress, and just go somewhere, whatever I looked like, no hesitation. I tried to think of what I wanted to do that day according to the things Rick never wanted to do, which is actually most of the things I want to do. The Adler Planetarium is closed until further notice (and I personally think planetariums make great dates, but I never get asked to one; I’m dragging someone else to one), and the Field Museum was having a free day which is a good way to catch coronavirus, so I figured it was something outdoors because it was too nice out to not go out. The leaves are just starting to change and Monday morning/afternoon is a good time for a drive out to the country.

And I love highway driving. I love road trips.

So Starved Rock it was.

I have some pictures of myself in 2020, but most of those look like 2020 threw me in a cage and tortured me for months. I figured this one is much better by comparison, because now, it only looks like 2020 pulled the fire alarm while I was in the middle of getting ready for the day.

This is the starved rock, by the way:

And this is a dried up waterfall:

I don’t know who the fuck this family is, but these two stupid assholes just walked their kids passed three groups of people with their cameras out who were about to take pictures like we weren’t there and just took their sweet time taking their own pictures.

Tip: when you’re in a state park, national park, whatever: your ass can wait 30 fucking seconds for everyone else to get their shot. I am posting this to shame them but also to show you how cool this little canyon is.

Got this picture after pushing passed those people. I know, I know: for someone like me who knows what coronavirus can do, I should be more patient, but they were just standing around like they were waiting for the realtor to show up or something.

I don’t remember what these little wildflowers are called, but they were the most hypnotic shade of lavender blue, nearly the perfect shade of periwinkle, a color I find strangely hypnotic.

But mostly I walked around. I tried to listen for the wind rustling the leaves, because you can easily miss that sound if you’re too busy engaging with other people or spending too much time in your own head trying to escape it.

And I have never wanted to escape my own mind. I like it in there. There’s pretty things and cool stuff in there.

I didn’t have a lot of time to be alone, and with social distancing in mind and the desire to make friends with stranger’s dogs considered, it wasn’t so much of a mindwalk as it was a return to something normal, or rather, an initiation into my new life. I made this decision alone. When I missed the exit, I wasn’t exasperated and automatically asking an invisible person to help me find the next one, or having too long of a discussion about what they wanted to eat, or checking to make sure someone is okay on those stairs or walking on those sandy walkways.

There is just me, taking care of me, making decisions for just me. Maybe someday — and I hope — I will use all my girlfriend/wife talents again, but for now, it’s me doing my thing.

In the meantime, I think I’m going to spend more time learning tarot.

I pulled the Wheel of Fortune today.

Hey, how are you tying this back to astrology, Miriam?

Oh shit, I almost forgot. That’s my thing, isn’t it — to blog about myself and then ultimately find a way to make it about astrology too, right?

Well, since you asked:

This is kind of an auspicious day for me. The Sun is conjunct my composite point (the midpoint of all my midpoints), Mercury is transiting my natal Cupido, and transiting Venus is conjunct my Mars/North Node. Neptune is still conjunct my ascendant, and transiting Saturn is now exactly trine my natal Saturn which is ruler of Venus and in the 7th house, and the transiting North Node is conjunct my IC.

So far, nothing from the outside has really made itself known, but there’s still nearly an hour left in the day. However, one thing I’ve learned about transits is that things can happen, in that things can come into your life or can happen from the outside that can affect your life without you knowing yet, especially if any of them are occurring in the “secret” houses, the 4th, 8th, and 12th.

So this probably isn’t my last shot at love, and something has happened recently that made the wheels turn, even if I don’t know what it is yet.

But in the meantime, I have a lot of work to do for me.