today i read my jan 2oo9 libra horoscope from THE best of all free online sources (riddled with ads, but oh well):

astrologyzone.com

i tend to send any friend here, whether or not they believe, because, by the time they’re done reading they’re going to find SOMEthing jarringly true and unusually so. this isn’t an astrology site that tells you, “someday this month you’re going to have to pay a bill.”

it gets specific and talks about key aspects of planets and lays things out with guidance and easy to absorb background (if you want it) on how the planets work together to influence your life.

note, they influence your life – they don’t predefine it. they don’t define your destiny, they aren’t carved in stone, you can ignore them and do things your own way and they’ll still be true regardless of what you do. it’s like weather. they can predict it’s probably going to rain this week but that’s not going to stop you from driving to work each day. however you might choose to take safer, less traffic jammed routes that will be safer than your usual routes in the rain, or if you have a lover who loves the rain, plan a romantic rooftop or garden rendezvous where you seduce them like in a movie scene. use it how you will, it’s still going to rain.

onward. the reason for my post … i’ve felt totally dead inside, emotionally, for years now. creatively, i yearn and long and dream and fantasize about an ideal love and an ideal future and i feel powerful emotions about that future, about those dreams. finding “the one” having a family, travelling the world, having intense, challenging conversations with someone who will look into my eyes and finally understand or come as close to understanding as anyone can but me.

i have been feeling for a couple years  now, a fear that i may never be able to love someone. i knew it might be due to life traumas, to things like abuse and trust issues in my past, as a child and adult. but i have with all certainty only loved one person romantically, and that one person did not love me. he may have been attracted to me, but it was basically an unrequited love that became nothing. 

i fell hard for this guy in 1995, i was basically 15.  it began as nothing but a slight liking. like, platonic. by the end of 1995, i realized i had an intense crush, a definite romantic interest. at that point i began to feel weird. i was  a teenager, after all. i fought against it for a while. i had trust issues after all. and i knew, quite clearly, that this boy did not have feelings for me or want me, regardless of a mutual “non superficial” attraction. ie, i was blackapina, he was hapa, and although our personalities meshed really well and we made each other laugh and i found him terribly charming and smart and funny and deep and kind and loyal and honorable – he did not want to get to know me in that way. he was a boy. he was preoccupied with white girls, and if they were hapa, he wanted them to look as unasian as possible. he didn’t say these things, but those were the girls he chased. he didn’t know any better. he’d grown up in a white world, although his mother was korean and he was living in korea. it was his first time living in asia. previously, he’d lived in ireland, and fallen in love with a red headed girl. her family had kept them apart … because he was half asian.

so. in 1996 i tried my darndest to fall out of love with him. i tried everything – avoiding him, trying not to be around him, trying not to think about him. of course, when you do that – the person becomes ubiquitous. everywhere i went, there he was.  i had a house party, he showed up. he stayed the night, with another girl from the group, the two of them sleeping on different couches. she woke up and saw him and i both separately pottering around and told us we looked like the brady bunch, like she’d woken up in our home. he and i had spent the night talking, learning about each other. he’d told me about the red headed girl from ireland.

i knew somewhere in there in 1996 that i loved him. senior year. i realized he did not love me and it would do me no good to try to not love him, it was too late, there i was. i’m a venus in scorpio. my love planet is in scorpio, meaning that my love is forever, permanent, jealous, intense, and dark. my personality is libra – chatty, airheaded, intellectual, creative, playful, open, breezy, always looking for fun and pleasure. happy to take care of others. into pretty things and fine quality goods. but i love like a scorpio – possessive and dramatic.

and so in 1996 i told myself – give up trying to fight him. just love him as he is and maybe try to work up to telling him how you feel but regardless college is coming and you’ll be free of the burden of living with it and him without it going anywhere.

prom came. i asked him out. he never answered. that was my answer. he took a girl who was half asian, and white, like him.

spring came. college was coming. i said goodbye to everyone, at a last hangout at the local “mall” – the dragon hill lodge.  i went home, the rest of the summer looming. i was leaving in a couple weeks for california.

i called him up and asked him – you realize i love you, right? he said, yes. i asked how long he’d known. he’d said for a while, but that it was okay, he loved me like a friend, yada yada, we can keep in touch. i got mad at him then. stupid thing to say, because he didn’t mean it and neither of us intended to keep in touch.

i was eager to be free of him then. it took me two years to stop thinking of him at random moments after that, two years to not hear that name and feel my heart speed up, two years to realize his name was no longer hounding me like before – where when i tried to avoid him someone with that name would be nearby, being called over an intercom, being announced on TV, being introduced to me.

and i finally let it go. but it’s now 2008, 1 day til 2009, and i have yet to love anyone else.

today i opened up the horoscope for libra, eager. it was posted a day early. toward the end of 2008 susan miller was hinting, big things are happening to your love life in 2009, jan and feb in particular, get ready, it’s amazing, mindblowing. she’s said this before but nothing really ever happened. i mean, minor stuff was predicted – great date nights, running into a magical person who may or may not work out. but for the most part – i met handsome creatures i might bang but no one i could ever love. and because of that i didn’t date anyone, or even try. how can you eat watery soft serve when you’ve had haagen dazs? or when you know it’s out there, possible, even if you’ve never gotten to have it before?

today, finally, the january horoscope for 2009 reveals all the “amazing” stuff to happen to my love life this year. “grain of salt” stayed in my mind as i read the libra page. i love this free site because it is thorough and detailed.

but still, i read it with a grain of salt. and then i hit this paragraph, hidden in the after summary, a part i never usually read since i read all the detailed stuff above:

When good fortune Jupiter enters your house of true love on January 5, he will brighten your house of true love for a full year. This is headline news in astrological circles, for Jupiter has not been in this area of your chart since 1997.

i clapped my hand over my mouth. the last time i actively loved someone, knew love, felt love, had known a person i could love, who could make me feel love, in spite of myself, despite myself. despite even his lack of love for me. was 1997.

i got chills and my heart jumped. i still think of him, sometimes. i heard he got married. i realize that that love is past and will never get to be. it still haunts me, from time to time. i wonder if i will ever meet someone i could love again, who could this time actually love me, and not be afraid, and not be self-hating or prejudiced about race, who could be open, who could be emboldened by what he sees in me and what he knows about himself. confident enough to love without limits, and to look me in the eye, and finally feel as inspired, as electrified and challenged, as exhilarated and delighted, as I do.

i know it will happen one day. i believe it, even if it may never come true. jupiter was apparently in my life in 1997, the year i loved someone but he did not love me.

here’s to hoping thist ime around jupiter is less of a bitch and shows me love enough for two.