Remember when I was actually trying to be a professional astrologer? Yeah, me too.

There was a time in which I was much more involved in astrology, doing regular readings and putting myself out there. Then, it just got to be too much: too much work, too much emotional involvement, and too much insanity. I think the pivotal point was finding myself on a Youtube live video with someone who was casually sharing conspiracy theories. Later that night, I was told that despite my upbringing and the fact that I finally became a lawyer at nearly 40 and work in largely ignored corner of the law representing the largely forgotten and downtrodden in a job with little glory and no fat paychecks, the simple fact that I was able to become any kind of lawyer meant that I was a Lizard Person, which meant that my essence was Machiavellian and materialistic and anti-spiritual, whereas the person spewing this at me was somehow the better person, the one with the better, more elevated essence.

But this shouldn’t have surprised me, since – no matter how much I tried to avoid it – the contradictions inherent in what I was doing, rooted in essentialism, but also constantly defying it, weren’t much different from lawyer=bad seed and psychic=good seed, even when lawyer=good and psychic=psycho.

I think that was what? Four years ago? There have been little cracks in everything for years, but that’s how the light gets in.

Star seeds never interested me but for maybe a few minutes. At the time, I believed in reincarnation, but the more I studied it, and the more I looked at charts, a few things stood out to me that flew in the face of the current New Age “wisdom”:

I learned that the ancients were right in that souls are male and female. They’re not sexless angels that somehow wander into this body or that body, no two-spirits, no bifurcated essence. That reality is in the astrology. And families have a purpose, a connection to each other. And the methods for determining this existed without any political or social motivation to determine sex, existing far before the invention of gender ideology in the 1950s.

I also realized that karma doesn’t exist. Consequences, yes, but karma? No. It’s just not in the charts. It’s not in the astrology. You don’t see karma unless you’re looking for karma: there’s no way for humans to currently see how it works in the grand tapestry of life or augment it in any significant way because so far, I haven’t seen it happen. There’s not a single psychopath who experiences karma even if he or she experiences consequences. The alleged next incarnation is not a direct result of the alleged previous one, nor is the subsequent life a lesson based on the sins of the previous life. It’s just flawed people being people, so even if we do reincarnate, what’s the point if we’re only conscious of this one, only living this one right now?

If we can’t even remember our past lives, and the current life is racking up more “karmic” debt that we can’t pay off because we don’t even know what the debts are in the next life, what’s the point of caring about past lives? It’s like trying to pay off a loan when you don’t even know what the balance or the interest is or with whom you made this agreement, all while trying to live this life. You only get to be you in this life. You only get to remember the days of this current life within this life. And frankly, there’s no utility in reincarnating over and over again to discover new truths or something, and then choose to move onto some other realm or stay here and teach others, because if you can understand the truth through either intellectual or experiential means, what’s the purpose of having to do both, over and over again, in a world in which progress is just a circle?

And why is it the more “spiritually evolved” someone is in this culture, the more of a self-absorbed they are? You’re “spiritually evolved?” It’s better to be spiritually unevolved, if that even means anything, with integrity and honesty than it is to waste your incarnation wishing incarnation away and pretending you’re not here. It’s more spiritual to eat a piece of Duncan Hines cake at a child’s birthday party with joy and gratitude than it is to spend countless hours writhing on the floor in $100 leggings, or splitting a purchase at magick shop among three credit cards preparing for a ritual to make yourself spiritually elevated, or slowly dying on a raw vegan diet with a carbon footprint that rivals an oil tycoon, or lying that your ability to be “spiritual” doesn’t come from your dedication but rather, largely comes from the fact that your wealth gives you enough leisure time and disposable income for such pursuits.

I was growing ever-weary of spiritual people. They were either in a perpetual state of crisis because they refused to grow up and invest in the real world, or they were in a perpetual state of pretending to be powerful and blessed even though very few of them brought about any practical or material positive changes to the world because no one was actually motivated by astrology, tarot, or their ancestors to put down the crystals and go to law school to become a public interest lawyer because that’s not spiritual.

And yet, they were all, in some way or another, expecting the rest of the world to spiritually “wake up” and become like them: useless, ineffectual, cannibalistic, and self-absorbed.

There was no spiritual awakening with Neptune in Pisces, only harm. I saw it; why didn’t you?

I began to wake up from waking up slowly over the past few years.

Not everything is a “spiritual awakening,” whatever that means. Neptune in Pisces is not a spiritual awakening, but rather, a spiritual coma. Pisces is slumber, Neptune is deception and confusion, the dissolution of boundaries, delusion, denial and glamor. Neptune is also compassion, universal love, and sacrifice…but where are we in the world right now? That’s what matters. Neptune, when in its natural sign of Pisces, does whatever its doing IN SPADES: just because a planet is comfortable where it is doesn’t mean it’s doing something great for humans or it’s going to do the thing we want it to do. That’s narcissism projected onto astrology. There is no Deux Ex Machina reaching down to change everyone, and even the hands of God that we have experienced before – the rapid conversion of much of the world to Christianity and the persistence of the Church – the astrologers, witches, and occult practitioners wave off as archaic and controlling, as if being told that you’re trapped in a cycle of Samsara, or that who you are is determined by what “star seed” came to Earth millions of years ago with a specific mission for the world and you have no choice but to live it out is not controlling? As being told if you don’t do this, or use these words, or if you don’t pay lip service to this thing, then you’re a bad or unevolved person – isn’t controlling?

Even the mere birth chart has so many possibilities because the blueprint is not the building and the builder is not bound to the blueprint, but the corporate overlords who own astrological smokeblowers like Aliza Kelly and her ilk, know that they can’t sell magazines or get advertisers if they share anything that is even slightly concerning. This is why they lied to you about COVID when the astrology was clear that that was a time to conserve, to step away and be patient, to follow the rules for the common good, and to sacrifice comfort for a higher earthly purpose, not to step out and start businesses. Again, they were predicting some sort of “spiritual awakening” with the stellium in Pisces, but the astrology was clear: this will be a time of massive confusion, delusion, deception, and illusions: the rise of the trans heresy, and the normalizing of a hatred of women, the normalization of a pill for everything (you don’t need to be on anxiety medication long-term, and that’s not what it’s meant for), the ignoring of real human trafficking in favor of imagined human trafficking because it’s more titillating (Pizzagate is not real, but human trafficking is real), the normalization of porn and making meaningless sex one’s life priority and identity, the lie that “sex work is just work” (as if men are quitting their corporate jobs to go do sex work because it’s “just work”) the normalization of living in a state of emotional infancy because you can’t grow up because you’re doing drugs to manage even the slightest uncomfortable feeling because you can’t tell the difference between a transient emotion and crisis, of people exploiting and harming each other intentionally – including their own children – for social media just to get attention because their lives are so empty and meaningless that they can only find meaning in the fake world. And on top of it, even if we know these things are wrong, even if we can see the harm that they do, our exceptionalism (which is also Neptune) makes us think that when it’s us, or when it’s the people we know, or when it’s not comfortable for us, there’s an exception to the rule, and it just so always happens to be the exception that works for us because we are so self-absorbed and in such denial of who we really are, and we’re so afraid (Pisces) to draw a boundary that we’d rather harm ourselves and the innocent than to tell someone else “no.”

The emperor has no clothes, but when the child points out that the king is naked, the child gets cancelled or told that perhaps he’d be more comfortable in a dress.

This is all Neptune in Pisces, because this is what humanity has chosen to build with this blueprint. While free will is limited and often controlled by other forces, we can still choose what we indulge, what we tolerate, what we look at, what we support, and what we work for. There were options, but this time around, we chose certain options over others because the only way there is a Neptune in Pisces spiritual awakening is with humility and penance – two very Piscean things – but many people did not chose prayer, penance, humility and sacrifice, and the ones that did were ignored by the world, which is ultimately, a very Piscean thing.

And even still, during all of this, I was happily going along with the madness, sinking further and further into sin until I was alienated, angry, and dissatisfied with everything. Nothing helped. No one helped. There was no solution. No prince charming to be found among the frogs. No side hustle, no professional success, no instant gratification, no new spiritual insights or magickal success that gave me peace because I was running away from peace and into confusion. I thought I was surrendering to the universe, whatever the “universe” is, but I was surrendering to nothing.

But nothing last forever, right?

Neptune will enter Aries, and it cannot be stopped: just because you can read the blueprint for the machine doesn’t mean you can stop the machine or that you can even build a new machine, and what you put into the machine will surely come out of it. Soon, there will be a choice to make, a reckoning, and I knew I would have to decide lest that choice be made for me.

I’m not going to share what I saw or when I saw it happening, but I assure you that it scared me plenty, because I did not see any way out that could be made with human hands, and yet: I knew that the world would go on…but how? And in what shape? And if this is what we do on our own, where did righteousness and order come from then? Could it be that I was wrong about everything, and so was everyone else, and that we will have to face this?

There was a long time in which I was always full of rage. I was still angry at Rick for leaving me debt and for what I felt was years of wasted time dealing with him. Angry at my parents for failing to raise me, for abusing me, for forcing me to be an adult before I was ready, for dividing up their children to make them more easily controllable such that they were never able to become friends with each other. At the dead church I grew up in that was ultimately a fashion show and a social club for lower middle class people and not a house of God. At my life choices. At my body. At those who rejected me. At those whom I anticipated rejection from. At my ex-husband for the abuse and blaming me for it. Angry at a world that had no place for someone like me, I thought. Angry at people for bothering me for their trifling problems. Angry that I wasted my 20s and 30s on men who didn’t love me. Angry that I felt I had no choice but to do that. Angry that I felt trapped by my school loans. Angry that I may have lost my chance at a different life. Angry that I didn’t have a supportive family and would never know what that’s like. Angry that after years of therapy, of magick, of occult study and attempts at self-improvement, I was nowhere and felt less like an adult and less like I mattered, more alienated from people than ever before. I didn’t want to write or do astrology or even talk to other people because writing meant engendering conversations and people coming to me for help when I could not help them nor bear their suffering.

I can’t help a single person, and I was tired of being stuck on Zoom calls on my weekends simply affirming people. When I had my debt paid down enough and got enough of a raise at work so I didn’t need a second job, I stopped. I started working again, and I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t concentrate.

I could barely think or find a quiet space to reflect, and fleeting feelings of joy, like being out in the woods, were marked by intense rages as I recalled all the things that angered me. I was fighting with myself and losing all the time, and I was tired.

And I couldn’t find a way out. I couldn’t find a change I could make to make them go away. There was no magick, no soul searching, no move or career change or spiritual reading or practice that changed any of this. I was like this for years, and it was getting worse, and I was getting hopeless. I had already given up on the affirmation I get from posting about astrology. I couldn’t find solace in others who thought as I did about the universe, and reading charts became as rote and tedious assifting through piles of discovery for trial.

But one thing I never gave up on was how amazing it is to be alive, to have a body, to be on Earth and to affect and be affected by nature. Even when I hated it, I knew this was a gift. I never could fully agree with the fallacy that humans are actually ineffable spirits trapped in meat suits looking to escape them as if it’s imperative to escape in order to be fully human. If that were true, humanity would have long since escaped them via extinction, but the will to live, our instinct to stay alive, means something. Our bodies and our being in the material world is integral to our existence. We are meant to have bodies and to live in material reality. To lose our ability to connect with the material world and find sublime pleasures in it is a sign of depression, not a sign of spiritual evolution. Even if you sacrifice this life for something bigger, there must be an appreciation of the magnitude of what is being sacrificed, not a mere casting off of a vestigial casing that serves no purpose, because the body is a gift, and it is no mistake because I can see in a birth chart what a person may look like, what their medical conditions could be, what they may like to eat, if they can sing, dance, and how well they sleep at night – if carnal existence means nothing, and the body is just a blank slate, why is the blueprint for the body and the soul the same? These bodies are no mistake, and they are not randomly assigned, just as no one is randomly assigned a family – which I could also see in the birth chart.

And if this is body is not simply a meat tube that I’m occupying, then how can I possibly be reincarnated from one very meaningful body to another as if they’re costumes? And what even is a soul? If a soul seeks a body, then isn’t it important for a soul to have a body? And how has this nonsense of body-as-costume fared well for others who are now more anxious and more escapist than ever, doing unnecessary violence to their bodies in self-hatred with the encouragement of the world who seems to hate our bodies, too?

Because it was obvious to me that in our bid to control our identities, which are fleeting and fickle things that can be forgotten completely after a head injury or a change in fashion, we sacrificed the integrity and sacredness of our incarnations, and I didn’t want to do that. I could not pretend that life was not beautiful and that I was actually meant to “live” as some sort of cosmic whisp meandering aimlessly through the universe, only stopping back on earth to tell others that they too could become cosmic nothingness and that’s the very best they can do.

The Anger was Taken From Me as a Gift, Free of Charge.

This rage has been removed. I still get angry, and I’m still critical and peevish, but the rage? The rage has been evicted.

I will blog about this miracle more in depth, but in praying the rosary, asking Our Lady to pray for us sinners – which would include me – in mediation of the Sorrowful Mysteries her Son experienced for our salvation, it was removed. What I could not do for myself, and what no other human could do, what no other being I invoked in the past could do, God did. At that point in my life, I was so used to my anger and hostility that I didn’t even know it was not necessarily a part of me and that it could be cured. Imagine having a slow growing tumor that slowly and steadily changes how your body works or appears to the point where you’re so used to it that you just accept that that’s how your body works or how it looks. Or imagine morbid obesity, really: it creeps up and you forget what it’s like to have a fully functional and healthy body to the point where doing what’s even considered normal and not remarkable for a non-morbidly obese person you’d consider miraculous or even athletic. That’s what it’s like to be demonically oppressed.

Then imagine that Mary’s prayers were answered, and then suddenly, it’s gone. The tumor is gone. The excess weight affecting every system in the body is gone, and there’s just…peace. Not a high. Not a giddiness or a intoxication, but actual peace. Actual presence and the feeling of being in control of your own mind once again. And I tested it with doing a crossword puzzle, and it was fine. I could still think. This was a gift: I was given the exact thing I didn’t even know I needed and didn’t even know I could ask for. I wasn’t worthy of it by any means. I certainly didn’t earn it. I didn’t actually do anything to get it — I wasn’t even praying for it because I didn’t even know it was something disordered that could be removed — and I didn’t even have to be in a “right mindset,” or think positive, or perform any sort of emotional alchemy. I was seeking intercession for someone else, actually. But in all these years, trying everything else to feel better, to feel focused, to feel emotionally safe, to feel that I have a purpose and that I am welcome on Earth as I am right now and that I don’t have to wallow in shame or defend my pride forever, never getting better…and then all at once, the Holy Spirit comes and brushes it all away in the middle of struggling to pray?

I chose to pray one night because I had no other choice. Nothing worked. Nothing made me feel better and everything else was worse. I was alone and not growing. Even therapy was just making me feel stuck in place. God doesn’t say no to prayers. He’s not Lilith or Hecate or some other goddess archetype who only accepts those who are initiated. He’s not Odin or some other warrior god who demands fealty. He’s not part of a so-called “closed practice.” He doesn’t need special candle colors, special incense, or special rocks to get His attention because He is omnipotent, and His power is not diminished without attention. Any time is the ideal time. He knows the difference between creating pomp and beauty out of love for Him and creating pomp and beauty because you’re trying to appeal to His ego. There are no special chants you must say to get His attention, no spirits you need to invoke to bind Him to tell the truth, no need to banish Him when you’re done talking because you want Him to remain with you. You don’t need sigils, amulets, or talismans to bind Him to you because you are already bound to Him, and the beauty of all the icons and artwork for Him are to remind you that He is already here, not to bind Him to Earth lest He leave you because He will never leave you, even if you leave Him. Once the pride that brought you to the elitism and secrecy of the occult has left you empty, you understand why the ever present, ever available, and ever loving God is your solace.

He is truly the powerful, living God that all occultists are actually seeking, just in the completely wrong direction.

He let me ask questions. He let me ponder things. He wasn’t insulted. He let me take it slowly. He let me share my doubts, confusions, and reservations. He let me share my disappointments with Christianity over the course of my lifetime. He let me talk about my anger at the world, at people, at myself. This eventually led to reading the Gospels, which I had read many times as a child, but with new eyes and no agenda this time. The Book of John especially made me understand more things, like why Jesus chose to sacrifice Himself as an ultimate act of love regardless of whether people would reject it or not: he who has less, gives less. He who has more gives more. Thus, He who has all gives all. He didn’t have to do anything. He could have rejected the cup. He could have not come at all. But humans, being the only created being with free will, cannot love unless they are free to love, and Jesus, being fully God and fully man, sacrificed everything out of His own free will out of love, because humans cannot be perfect and make up for their imperfection. Why make us this way? Because without the opportunity to choose sin, there is no opportunity to choose love, and love can only be freely given, as anything else is simply duty. Even though much of the culture sees Jesus as an over-sensitive, namby-pamby hippie who was sort of a divine patsy that we’re all guilted into pandering to, it takes an enormous amount of strength to choose to do what He did – supernatural strength – and continue to choose it until the very end. I don’t know of a single person who would have chosen to be stripped of their dignity, their family, their friends, their sense of self, of their literal skin, their blood, their breath, their entire body, and then their soul. Humans don’t even have the ability to be stripped of their divinity, but even that He gave up too when He went into Hell before He came back into His body and then descended into Heaven. There is not a single other god in the human imagination who has given up EVERYTHING out of love, purely out of love, knowing that many humans will reject love anyway. There is not a single god in the history of the human imagination that was ever willing to do that knowing that humans can and would reject it anyway…and then allowing them to reject it and then come back to it. That’s not something that a human ego can manage. That’s only something an all-powerful, all-loving God can do.

We don’t even really have any other creation stories in which humans were made out of love and not for labor for or for the amusement of bored gods. We were made out of love for love, and even when we left the Garden, we were kept from making the same mistake of eating from the Tree of Life so we would be stuck cast out forever, and God has still been with us along the way. Although the Garden of Eden is not literal, it’s an allegory to explain why we, as children of God, are here and not up there with Him…yet. Sure, even if we evolved into humans and humans are here, but as we are here, we are here for love.

God is love, the source and author of life; the only “liberation” from love and from life is hatred and death. With God, there is no death, only life, and all in Heaven are living eternally – this we were shown the first time at the Transfiguration – while all who are not with God are dead. Why bother with any lesser gods or spirits, should they even exist, when there is one God above all? All this nonsense people do out of self-interest and ostensibly out of love just breeds more self-interest. Why bother trying to read the blueprints anymore when the master builder is right here? He’s letting us choose Him because He made us in His image, and like Him, we get to choose love. We aren’t perfect, but we get to choose to strive for love, actual love, and not self-interest disguised as love.

And if you think this is extreme, trying throwing out your vices, your drugs, your psychiatric medications to control your emotions, your entertainment, all your “friends” on social media and simply be in this world and see how you feel. Because if you don’t feel right simply by being, you don’t have anything on me.

But here’s the good news:

Jesus already won. Whatever happened in the last 2000 years by the works of men, Jesus still won. Christianity is NOT dying: I saw that in the astrology. There is no rise of diffuse and disagreeing neo-pagans whose practices are really just elaborate inverses of the Mass and some borrowed folk traditions dressed up as “magick,” of the diffuse and disagreeing New Agers, of astrologers, of atheists, of the spiritually indifferent, and of the trenders, because chaos cannot rise. I’m 44, I came back to this, I’m a lawyer who is certainly able read and think critically, and there was no fear in my conversion, just love. God wanted to meet me where I was, how I was, even though I was at the time in a deep state of mortal sin. And I was very, very sorry about all the hurt I caused, all the insult to God in all of my occult practices. Here’s the one who already knew what I needed before I knew, gave it to me simply out of love, and here I was with a house and a life full of things diminishing Him, insulting Him, denying Him, and discouraging others to seek Him and His love. This is what I have been denying, what I have been turning others away from? How horrible I was. How terrible was everything I had done. No one can make you penitent by force; you have to have penance in your heart.

Christianity may be a smaller crowd now, with the lukewarm letting their lack of faith lead them away, with prioritizing their politics over God, with treating the Church as a social club rather than the house of God, or with demanding that the Church reflect their values rather than be the place to find their values. But it will be left with the passionate and the devout, a Church contracting back from the Piscean nebula to the smaller star Aries-like star, burning bright. The Church is shrinking, but it may have to become smaller to become stronger – in prayers by me, by others who have said prayers for me, this happened to me. Not by all my years of occult workings, not by my own efforts or those that were contrary to God did anything good happen to me from the inside out. All window dressings changed as the seasons changed, but I could only be changed on the inside by God.

So I don’t even do astrology anymore. I trust the God who cured me. All will happen according to His plan, and He doesn’t need me to keep track of it. It’s certainly different, having all this empty space where all that stuff used to be, but God fills up my time. I have a lot of catching up to do – a lot of praying, a lot of learning, a lot of growing. I have no idea what the future holds, but every day is a gift, and however my life was shaped so I am here right now, so be it that I am free to embrace all of this now. Who is left in my life now to discourage me? They are gone.

No atheists in fox holes: a memory from April 5, 2020.

I remember about four years ago when Rick died. I knew he was dying because I could see his skin becoming mottled and the life leaving him. I think back on it now, when he first waved for me to get out of the way as I was calling 9/11. He was looking at something straight ahead of him, and I was standing in its way, whatever it was. I thought it was perhaps him thinking he was seeing his departed loved ones, because if he saw his mother, he would ask me to step aside. However, when he was sinking back in a chair and appeared to die – and he was too big for me to move onto the floor by myself – I grabbed his shoulders and told him that he wasn’t dying, that the ambulance was coming, that he was going to be okay. I didn’t actually believe that, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that being true at the time, but I told him this because I knew he was scared of the dying part of death. But Rick didn’t see me. He was looking past me, through me, his stare fixed on something somewhere else, like another place. He kept trying to speak, and it was hard to tell what these last words were, but I’m pretty sure he was saying “Jesus.” He and I, two atheists who were sure that nothing happens when you die – I thought you come back, and he thought you just die with your body, was saying “Jesus,” over and over again, his eyes wide open until he took his last breath. His body went slack and his eyes relaxed as he sunk back in the chair he died in. At that time, we had been so departed from Christianity for so long that I actually thought he was saying “juice” or “just” for some reason. He didn’t want juice, and “just” didn’t make sense. “Judge” made slightly more sense; I realized he may have been having a stroke at the time since he was sitting straight up and his eyes were wide, but juice, just, and even judge didn’t make sense as his last words.

He always said his last words would be words of love to me, but that was all just love bombing – when he knew he was dying, he kept his distance from me and wanted me to leave him be, which makes sense because he didn’t really love me; he spent his last moments with the person he loved most in the world: himself.

I haven’t looked in a person’s face as they died before, so I didn’t realize at the time that it’s not normal to die with your eyes wide open and staring ahead unless you’re having a stroke. But now, I realize something I didn’t before: Rick’s eyes were wide open in astonishment and fear, and he was saying “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus” because that’s what he saw, and he was afraid. I used to think that this was a hallucination brought on by the stroke based on vestigial religious beliefs he had long since given up and that seeing Jesus was a way that he was comforting himself in death, just as he may have been comforted by seeing his departed loved ones. But the sight of Jesus was not a comfort to him – his brain was not tricking him into comfort at the last moments. He was scared of what he saw.

Rick lived a life of unrepentant sin and depravity, of which he felt entitled to live, with no concern about how it affected others at the time or would affect others in the future, and with no concern about how it was accelerating his own demise. Or rather, he was unconcerned that his life choices were accelerating his own death because he would rather die than become old, die than reap what he has sown in this life, die rather than lose his source of narcissistic supply – his looks, which were rapidly declining anyway. And now, he had what he was trying to achieve: death, but not the death he thought he was going to get. Unlike the death he thought he was going to get, a get-out-of-jail-free card in which he just slips into oblivion, he wouldn’t be able to lie or cheat his way out of this. He wouldn’t be able to create a diversion or prey on someone’s sympathies. He wouldn’t be able to convince the Lord that he was the bigger victim and entitled to behave as he did. He wouldn’t be able to dazzle Jesus with his charisma. He wouldn’t even be able to feign ignorance because he grew up Catholic and he learned about this. He wouldn’t get the opportunity to argue, as he so often did in real life, that whatever crimes and harm he commits now are offset by some vague charity or good acts he did or prayers he mumbled at some point in the past.

Here was Jesus Christ, merciful savior and just judge. The verdict was instantaneous, the evidence irrefutable, and there was nothing Rick could do about it.

I would like to think that because he was afraid that there was repentance in his heart. He was defiant of everything throughout the time I knew him, with very little conscience, but with what conscience he did have, he knew something was wrong. We are not the judges of souls and can’t know if a soul goes to God in life or departs from Him in death, and we can’t know who will be given mercy and who will depart from God in the future, so we pray for Rick because none of us can know if he rejected God and chose Hell instead, because Hell is for those who choose it, who reject redemption and reject the Holy Spirit.

I don’t share this as a story to scare anyone – because if you believe, you would be moved by this, and if you don’t believe, you’ll roll your eyes and be defiant – but to share that no matter what the current zeitgeist is, you are still seen by the One who created you, and not as you see yourself, but as you actually are. Humility is seeing yourself as God sees you, good and bad. Your talents, your skills, your deficits, your faults – all the things He sees. There is still time, but it will take humility, penance, and prayer, all the Neptune in Pisces things our culture thinks is beneath us, as our culture thinks is not befitting of little gods of their own little worlds.

But I saw a proud man, a once very handsome and successful trial lawyer die in a stained wife beater in a cluttered roach- and clothes-moth infested apartment in Rogers Park in the middle of the night on a torn up old leather chair he wouldn’t throw out, because he was still clinging to his idea of who he was in the past, someone he likely even really wasn’t to the degree he thought he was, dying scared of what was next.

Thankfully, my next apartment is all my own and I haven’t seen a roach or clothes moth since. What the moths didn’t eat of his precious designer clothes he spent so much time, energy and money trying to preserve, I sold, and the rest was thrown out. Everything he clung to from his past, was sold, given away, or thrown away. His family didn’t want any of it, and I guess that was the trade off of being left alone in the pandemic to clean out all his clutter. I threw out the boxes of paperwork from his old cases he thought would be turned into a book someday. I threw out his photos, his video recordings from when he was on the news, his souvenirs from fancy trips he took with women who came before me. All the vestiges of his pride, long gone and forgotten. He was cremated and did not have a service, so no one was able to see him in one of his precious Armani suits one last time. He’s interred in a wall somewhere, and I have not visited him, and I have no idea if anyone else has, either. Even if you could argue that it doesn’t matter anymore because he’s dead, it all really mattered to him in real life, being celebrated and admired, much in the way people are doing now all over social media for increasingly bizarre reasons.

And on February 8, 2024:

Recently, almost four years after his death, I got some mail from a medical debt collector for Rick in my new apartment, somewhere he’s never lived. They don’t know he’s dead because they probably just bought the account. I didn’t open it. It’s not my debt. There was a time after I moved out that the new tenant in my old apartment and the landlord kept calling me to pick up Rick’s mail. I told them to write “return to sender” and put it in the mail, but they wouldn’t. So I drove there, retrieved the box of mail, and stood in the lobby of my old building, writing “return to sender – deceased” on Rick’s mail, leaving it for the mailcarrier, and then went back to my new home. After the second time of making this pointless trip, and sifting through his junk mail, collections letters, and crap he bought from Wish, by the third request, I just told them that it’s a violation of federal law to hold onto Rick’s mail while waiting for me to come by, especially since I’m not his heir and not legally responsible for his estate or his debts, and have no authority to possess or open his mail, either.

Then the calls and texted stopped.

It’s okay to let go of the dead and live your life, and no one can make you hold onto them, even if that’s the culturally expected thing to do, even if they don’t understand why you’re letting go.