As I write this, I’ve had ‘Like a Prayer - Choir Version’ on repeat for a week straight. I’ve sealed two letters of tarot readings and hand crocheted bows with stickers, and written eleven tarot poems and stories. I usually write these (or at least parts of them) by hand in a journal, but this time I’m writing it on the cutest letter stock. I’ll add cute stickers to it and seal it with another bow or maybe I’ll glue the bow to the front (I think I have nail glue hiding somewhere close).
Since we last conversed, I’ve moved 1400 miles, started an MA, a new job, and if I’m lucky (and as change occurs in 4s rather than 3s) I may end this upcoming season having fallen in love (or at least started the process of falling – hopefully a non-limerence tumble this time around), so fingers crossed.
For now, I just want to embrace the newness and feel my feelings. It’s so new and truthfully very scary, but in the way that makes you giggle until your already breathless lungs burn and the heat spreads through your entire being. I’m incredibly thankful. I’ve stated it twice aloud to people and now I’ll write it a third and hold the fourth close to my heart: I’m just so happy to be here. Both in the sense of being alive and considerably healthier than I was a year ago, and for the fact that I’m finally where I’ve yearned to be for over a year. I have a job that’s exactly what I need at this moment, and I’m in a place that aligns perfectly with my upcoming profection year. I know the word ‘synchronicity’ hates to see me coming, but what else can I call this? ‘Blessing’ could work but even that doesn’t capture the wonder of all these woven strings, so ‘synchronicity’ is just gonna have to be pried from my hands when I’ve become dust in the earth.
26 is generally a forgettable age – kind of like a middle child. The frontal lobe is developed enough to be a full fledged adult with a degree or two, and thus old, but in reality it’s barely a fetus in relation the world around it. Just an inch over a quarter of a century. Returning to the middle child jab (which doesn’t count because I’m one), it’s almost fitting that 26 is a 3rd house profection year.
The other day I had a conversation with a coworker about being middle children and what that looks like. We agreed that it often feels like an awkward middle ground but that it’s also a really good vantage point to notice what you don’t want to be like. You look at the sibling(s) ahead of you and the one(s) behind and think, ‘I love these people and I never want to do what they’re doing.’ Then you reroute and move accordingly.
Being 26 included a lot of the same sentiment. ‘I like/love this but I hate the way it’s being done, how would doing it differently look?’
A profection year is an astrological technique that shows what themes will be relevant each year in your life depending on what house(s) is being activated. The 3rd house is the home of Gemini, one of the signs associated with the planet Mercury. Its themes include siblings, communication, writing, early life, hobbies, short trips, and your immediate surroundings.
I’ve always argued that three children is the perfect number. It may not be symmetrical or easy to do if you plan for all of them to be birthed, but three kids is a good way for people to learn democracy early on. It’s harder, but not impossible, to form cliques, they have to learn how to balance three different sets of wants and points of view, and at any given time two will gang up on one but the pairings will switch with no rhyme or reason. Of course, I’m biased as the middle of three, so it’s not the soundest of claims. I still stand by it though.
The same way one’s siblings and immediate environment shape the way they interact with the world at large, is the same way 3H profection years reshape us.
This summer was reCognition Summer. During it, I took myself away from the digital and immersed myself in reality in ways that were reminiscent of my childhood; an endeavor that led me to joining a crafting group of older women. They taught me how to knit (I’ve completed a scarf!), diamond paint, play Mahjong, and showed me how enjoyable being older is. We spoke about catty old white ladies in one of their other Meetup groups, the Houston school system and corruption, video games, and their children. I loved every second of it.
One memorable day, I was so disheartened and worried over my interview process. All that angst washed away as I pinned little colorful gemstones to numbers while listening to their stories. It reminded me of the feeling I get from one of the only podcasts I willingly listen to called “Nothing much happens” where the narrator weaves tales with no real beginning or ending or plot and lulls you into a peaceful rest. Just vibes, crafts, and joy.
When I’m 40 – and 60 and 80… – I want to be that joyful. The kind of joy that makes you youth incarnate. They take care of their families and manage to find time for multiple meetup groups and hobbies. They had “childish” interests like video games and stanning Kpop idols. They had beef they shared and dissected when they got together but it was always just a minor annoyance that (while interesting and messy) was overshadowed by everything else they had going on that brought joy into their lives.
reCognition Summer led to a lot of almost out of body look backs. Reading my old favorite books in minutes – remembering how it used to take hours, and tearing up at the thought of elementary school me, eating my dad’s pancakes without a screen to distract from the taste I crave every Saturday without fail, sitting in the sun in the front or back yard – still flinching and running from mosquitoes and all their buzzing kin. I started school again this summer, and for that I had to find some medical records. As I was reading through some of the nurses’ notes from a period of hospitalization, I began to recall that time.
I never forgot it, but in my head I always recalled it as a time where I got to play games, miss school, and eat instant ravioli for two months. I only ever remember getting sick of it forwards the very end of it because I missed my siblings and dad. However, reading those notes reminded me of how painful it was; I basically had to relearn how to breathe, and after one of my surgeries I couldn’t sit up until the morning of Thanksgiving. It reminded me that my mother thought she was gonna lose one of her young children and that’s probably why she still babies me to this day.
It’s always been a sort of joke that whenever I went to the doctor as a child for a serious issue the doctors would never believe anything was wrong with me. Not because of medical racism (though I’m sure that didn’t help) but because I would be running around laughing and playing with a diagnosis that kept most patients bedridden and wane. Even now when I have to go to the ER I’m extremely coherent and calm no matter my pain level.
I’ve always taken my pain for granted and considered my tolerance for it to be nothing special. I’ve become stoic to it. Reading the notes filled me with a sense of sadness for little Nwaka and her pain, but also admiration of her joy. Her circumstances were always suffocated by the strength of her enjoyment of life.
I consider myself to be an introvert. I need time to recharge after being with people. The story I used to tell myself was just that people exhaust me and I’m a little scared of them. But as a child I was full of energy and never stopped playing. I would go from solitude to surrounded by people, I wasn’t afraid to talk to anyone about anything. I had fun no matter how ill or lonesome I was. I was exceedingly filled with joy.
26 was (old and new) community, and relearning my unique form of communication. It was cultivating new hobbies and dusting off old ones. It was reconnecting to my child self within the walls of my childhood home in ways I never allowed before. It was reaching out and not being met with scorn but with love and familiarity.
It was reaching out into the universe of memory – the same way there’s a ball of frozen water we can see looking billions of light years into the past with a telescope – and touching joy. It was touching that same joy 20+ years into the future in the form of a crafting group in West Houston. That joy – same as the water now dispersed across our universe – is eternal.
26 was everything a 3H projection year could have hoped to be, and now I’m submitting myself to to the 4H.
I ask that it brings a redefinition of home – especially within myself – comfort, serenity, new roots, clarity of emotion, care for self, and strengthened foundations. I hope that as I learn what a home within myself looks like it prepares me for what a home alongside a partner could eventually be. I pray that as I settle within myself I never forsake that in the name of having a community, because there’s no true community that would ask me to self-cannibalize. I think I will find community because no home is a solitary island of one. Those islands are still surrounded by currents that pull in passing ships and connect islands up to thousands of miles away. What’s for me will find me and vice-versa.
Thank you, 26. Thank you, Nwaka. Thank you to all that reside in my heart and race through my mind even longer than my fortnightly musical worms. My actions have taken me away from yesterday, but it too resides forever in my heart and I’ll always remember it fondly. Death only exists for the forgotten.
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