day 10: ten of swords (eternal sunshine of the spotless mind)

12/22/2020

Peace y'all!

Today we are looking at The Ten of Swords (The Sun in Gemini). This card is a combination of Sun energy, which represents clarity, sight, joy, understanding, renewal & youth, & Gemini (The Lovers) which has to do with the Third House of friendships & close relationships (& also confusion, deception & decisions). Combined in the Ten of Swords you get the experience of seeing & accepting yourself & your relationships exactly as you are / they are- the good, the bad & the ugly- the titties & the snakes, the pretty hair & the flaming loins, the angels & the obstacles, the closeness & the distance.

It's funny to me that this is the card that would come up after the Nine of Pentacles, because toward the end of the Nine-of-Pentacles post I was talking about the woman’s loverrrrrr & then sure enough, the Ten of Swords is an extension of The Lovers. But despite its parents, when we look at the actual Ten of Swords, dude is dead af & love is the furthest thing from our minds.

But if we look at the Lover’s card, that’s our idea of love. Perfect bodies, beautiful scenery, eyes closed in bliss, angels blessing the path. Never mind the snake in the woman’s ear making her mistrust her own thoughts, or the burning bush behind the man setting his loins on fire for anything that moves- all that is on the sidelines/ background because the focus is lllllooooove. Notice though, this couple is at a bit of a distance from each other. They have a mountain between them (pinnacles!) which indicates problems, but they don’t care about that. They figure if they can just find that perfect person, that twin soul, then somehow the angels will remove the obstacles & make all the struggles worthwhile. A happy ending. All's well that ends well.

But not exactly. With the addition of the Sun card, baby makes three. This doesn’t have to be a literal baby, this just represents the reality that there is always something new to do, deal with, understand, relate to, react to, take care of, learn from, handle, delegate, protect, experience- on the path. Life comes at you quick. Never a dull moment. Literally as I’m typing this, my thirteen year old daughter had just finished doing her hair, & it was so pretty & she was feeling herself (as she should). She was thinking about how tomorrow is her first day back to school after X-mas break, & her hair would be super cute on the Zoom call. And then she got up to make a PB & J, & then when she sat down, ready to eat her sandwich & watch a YouTube video, she discovered that somehow her earbud had ripped apart & broken. Her five year old brother said, karmaaaaa. She hit him out of anger, he hit her back, I broke them up & then lectured her about taking out her aggression on him, & now she’s sitting here crying because all she wanted to do was eat her damn sandwich in peace & now she has to either deal with no ear buds at school tomorrow or put on outside clothes & go to the store in the rain. The most chill, optimistic moment went to shit in five seconds. That’s the Ten of Swords, AKA clarity on the path, AKA the realization that expectation versus reality will have you fucked up every time.

Because the Ten of Swords carries Lover’s energy, it deals with the self as much as it deals with the other. As you have experiences that help you immediately recognize someone else’s bullshit, you also have experiences that force you to face your own bullshit too. Instinctively you want to reject other people’s bullshit as well as your own, because its not pretty, the way love is supposed to be pretty. Somewhere we got the idea that we are only supposed to love perfect, beautiful, angelic beings- & therefore we automatically reject the parts of ourselves & others that are gross, despicable, irritating, deceptive, frustrating, smelly, stupid. We try to change ourselves & change our loved ones to fit into the mold we’re comfortable showing affection & appreciation, but when that doesn’t work, we wind up suppressing ourselves & rejecting our loved ones- which only guarantees we’ll meet those same parts of ourselves & others somewhere else on the path (Sun Card, hello!!) because there’s nowhere else to go except earth & there’s nothing else to be except human, & earth is an imperfect place filled with imperfect people.

Yet there’s a fine line between being using imperfection as a motivation or a crutch. There is a difference between ‘people always lie so fuck people,’ & ‘People tend to lie so I’ll not be so naive,’ or ‘I’m flawed & there’s not point in trying,’ & ‘i’m flawed so I know I need to try harder.’ Attitude is everything.

Remember the Lover’s card is represented by the Air Sign Gemini. Air is swords, yes? So love is MENTAL. It's a choice, a decision that you make in your mind & then follow through with your body. You will never feel like pretending like it doesn’t bother you when your wife plucks her chin hairs, or flushing your husband’s poo because he got in the shower & forgot- but it is the mental choice of love & the respect of your vows that keeps your shit together when you want to scream & run.

And it is the same with ourselves. The longer we walk the path of life as our own soul mates, we recognize certain phases we’ve gone through & come out on the other side. When we realize suddenly we’ve grown out of being who we were, there always the blindingly uncomfortable clarity of who we’ve been- God, I was such a BITCH, I can’t believe I used to dress like that, my hair was so UGLY, ugh my ass was so FAT. In these moments we can become overly infatuated with who we’ve become (Look at ME, I’ve come such a LONG WAY) as a knee-jerk rejection of who we used to be. Which is crazy, because how can we be who we are, if not for who we were?? How can we honor our progress without paying homage to our problems? One begat the other, yes? Baby makes three.

On top of that, the very thing we feel “proud” of one day, we’ll one day evolve past & instinctively want to ridicule, unless we make the (mental!) decision to love & accept ourselves in all our phases, with all our faces, with all our chins & ass & pimples & breath & teeth & skin & should-a, could-a, woulda-s - & it is the same with those we proclaim to love. We must love them beyond the fairy tale, the ideal, the filters, the likes. Love is REAL. And it is the same with those who claim to love you. Do you want to be loved for your highlights, your waist trainer, your paycheck, your laugh…? It's easy to be loved for those things. But those things are not the REAL you, only the things you use to soften your essence, like using soap to soften water (but it's the water that gets you clean).

Speaking of REAL, the picture on the Ten of Swords is what we do to those we REALLY love, including ourselves. Swords behind their back (gossip/ betrayal), overkill (harping on flaws), abandoned-him (abandonment), felled / killed-he (feeling guilty); & then the realization that they-murdered-him-then-missed-his-eye (there’s more to him than meets the eye). A pile of knives (apo-lo-gize). God, mourn him (Good morning!); handles in the storm (handled the storm), here comes the new sun (here comes someone/something new).

The Ten of Swords is a snapshot of true, everlasting love (both of self & other): betrayal, fuckery, hurt, sadness, depression, the pointlessness of existence, the repeated attempt to bury the words & thoughts that speak the name of this fucking awful reality & kill it once and for all- yet inexplicably, despite the worst storms, the wounds, the pains, the KILLING (S)WORDS, inexplicably here again is the light, the sun, the joy, the terrible desire & overwhelming compulsion to seal his fate / see his face, despite knowing exactly how this shit finna go.

Love is mental yet it makes NO SENSE, lol.

(One + One = baby makes three)

What’s y’alls Ten of Swords?

P.S. I named this post after the movie titled ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ starring Kate Winslet & Jim Carrey because it is exactly about the stupidity & invincibility of love. Watch it if you haven’t, it's so good!!

P.P.S. I have hella shadows with this card! This card IS a shadow, or naw? One thing that stands out particularly for me, is the fact that my older sister & my husband are both Gemini’s with the same birthday. They both get on my last damn nerves, & I’m estranged from one & divorcing the other- but I have to also be honest & say no one has ever loved me higher, deeper, wider, longer, stronger, more loyal, more freaking...TRUE- than my sister & husband. And also, no two people have hurt me more, or been more disloyal, shallow, deceptive, selfish, dramatic, violent, careless, dangerous. Our relationships are exactly like this Ten of Swords, where we hurt each other & apologize again & again, but I noticed the exact same shit always happened. Eventually, I chose the opposite of love when dealing with them- I did what made sense to my Virgo (Hermit) mind- I cut them off. I quit fucking with them. Which I guess means I made the mental decision to stop loving them (because the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over & over and expecting a different result & loving them drove me fkn crazy). I still love them in my heart but what good does that do them? None because I refuse to show it. I will never have one of those swords in my back again, as it pertains to those two. For them, I have no more (s)words. But that’s kind of messed up, no? Or naw? I guess that’s the part where I’m fucked up, but nonetheless I honor my choice.

I’ve had the exact same conversation with both of them, too. They each apologized to me for a bunch of shit, & I half-ass accepted, more to shut them up than anything (can't get a s-word in). And then they each (in separate conversations mind you!) asked me, do you have anything you want to apologize to ME for? Silence & a shrug was my answer both times.

Let me think about it, I said, after a pause.

(dead-man-at-sea / in-san-i-ty)
(deadened- wait-for-ship / dead end relationship)

5 Comments

Kelsey

1/6/2021 07:32:58 pm

As of today, hubs and I are just getting through our latest Ten of Swords moment, which was triggered a couple nights ago on Monday. We have our awesome couples therapist to thank for helping us through! It’s an old fight that happens often around our daughter’s bedtime. It highlights our differences in parenting style, which is that I prefer more routine and structure as a way to make my life easier, and I’m happy to hold that structure and enforce the routines. Hubs is more interested in letting things flow and not trying to force things in the moment. I think both approaches are good, but too far in either direction causes problems.

What this is really about though, is us both trying to have as much ease as possible before the next baby comes. We need to learn how to work together given our differences, and we need to understand the added pressure we feel in our desperation to hold on to the known-ness of life right now as a family of 3, before we become 4. I have definitely been guilty of harping on his flaws in this situation and I don’t want to do that because… who wants to be a nag?!? Not me. I’m not his mother and I resent both him and myself for turning me into a nag whenever it happens!

“Love is mental.”
“...the realization that expectation versus reality will have you fucked up every time.”
yep.

1/6/2021 07:34:27 pm

Thank you for this post, Oubria! It has helped me understand what has been going on in my marriage over the past few days, and it seems like we are learning how to untangle ourselves from an old / familiar fight that we've been caught up in for a long time.

1/6/2021 07:44:24 pm

Oh also, Monday was totally for me what you described happened to your daughter. I had a beautifully fulfilling day, feelin’ myself, only for it to turn to shit in a matter of seconds! I only started recovering from it today. I appreciate that share!

Dela

1/7/2021 03:27:57 pm

I think my 10 of swords shadow happened when I had my mental breakdown in 2020. It was a long time build up of just being crowded and not being able to breathe within my headspace, living space, and my overall lifestyle. I had a lot of stress packed onto me (who doesn't?)

And my tipping point was Valentine's day 2020. I tried to be the perfect girlfriend, but I was already know for being in therapy for having a *borderline personality disorder* which I know now as just.... a result of alot of unpacked trauma and self hate.

And so, I was very volatile. On Valentine's day, me and my boyfriend had a little mini getaway... and as we did our thing up in the sheets, he has a knack for using the words slut and whore... I wanted to be liked and wanted to play it his way to please him so I went with it. I do think role play with this type of thing is ok, I'm just not (and was not) in the right headspace to do it. I hadn't done work to unpack the root of my slutiness and my being a whore in my ho phases of life.

So I held my resentment in... and after we did our thing, we went out to eat. There was one tiny thing that happened (basically i didn't get my way) and I completely exploded. I threw a damn fit. And I stayed angry until the next morning because he wasn't having it. He wasn't responding. Which made me even more pissed and having felt abandoned. I couldn't deal. All my hurt, my trauma, my shadow, my ego, all the ugly parts of me came out and I was a walking trigger. I said hurtful things, in private AND in public. Thus shaming him and embarassing him and utimately humiliating him in public.

Looking back at that, he did not deserve that. That was a result of my not tending to myself and being completely fed up with the self-betrayal I constantly engaged in.

Since then I have learned to create boundaries, how to love myself, and how to apologize. Cuz lord knows I didn't know a damn thing about knowing how to apologize in the past.

Big sigh. I'm very thankful that through it all, he is still by my side as my ride or die. And that the discomfort we go through together is expected and will be overcome. Although I'm embarrassed for stooping that low, it happens. And although I am ashamed of how I treated my boyfriend, it happens. I've learned from it and apologized, and now I can move on in good faith.

LMP

1/12/2021 11:48:06 pm

Trigger Warning-Insurrection, violence at the Capitol, racism, whiteness, white learning, caucacity.

Last Wednesday, the shadow of whiteness cast its long, ugly self along the Capitol Building of the US. I have been looking straight into the white shadow, for fear that this sickening disease of white supremacy will slip like a snake into my unconscious and fester denial, bystanderism, enabling, and silence.

My brother confirmed that the less radical of our two trumpist sisters supports the insurrection. I don’t know why I thought that this type of behavior—a heavily armed white mob storming the Capitol, killing an officer, racist attacks on officers, smearing shit, stealing things, breaking windows, plus the coordinated lack of law enforcement response in obvious fucking contrast to the response to the DC June BLM protests, such as allowing the insurrectionists to leave unharmed; bringing zip ties, and and and…was a line that would make anyone supporting the bad orange man stop and say, “ok, it was fun but that’s a line that shouldn’t be crossed.” My sister likened it to the American Revolution.

I thought this would be a line.

If this sister is this radicalized I already know where the other one stands.

The deal has been broken and I can never go back to those relationships as they existed. They are not supportive sisters on a personal level, and now that they are proud radicalized members of a violent white supremacist cult, even from behind keyboards, those ties need cut. Dead as a man with ten swords in the back. (That was almost democracy, the dead man on the floor.)

I hope that it is the death of the type of representative government that didn't actually represent or provide justice to it's citizens equally, ever.

My work is with the white people who are also doing work on the collective white shadow, and the people of color who invite me into opportunities to work with or for them. To make conscious my own racism and supremacy that is in my individual shadow. This is the part of the card that is staying with people, warts and all, if you choose to be in relationship.

There is a lot of sorting going on with regards to who can be worked with, who I need to create space from or be wary of, and who cannot be worked with.

White people as a group would love to eternal sunshine the spotless collective mind to forget all about white supremacy and keep it in the shadows.

In my shadow: I did not do enough to call people in my family, workplaces, friend groups, academic circles—out. I didn’t want to cross an elder, or I was intimidated, or too comfortable, or worried the person would go off on a rant at me, or I rationalized that they weren’t being racist. Or I would call them out in an aggressive way that changed nothing. Sometimes I got it right. I want to get it right more often. Listen and learn.

40 days
of shadow work