Welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Lanyadoo. I'm an astrologer, psychic medium, and animal communicator, and I'm going to give you your weekly horoscope and no-bullshit mystical advice for living your very best life.

Jessica: Azalea, welcome to the podcast. What would you like a reading about?

Azalea: Hi. I'm trying to work to overcome an obsession I've formed with a person. When I met this person, I was navigating a particularly difficult time, and he was very inviting. I didn't really think anything of him until several months later when the budding of a sudden and very intense crush formed. I'm not someone who forms crushes very easily, and he made me feel very seen, which is something I don't feel very often and struggle to allow. I allowed myself to lean into my feelings for the first time in a way that is likely very normal for others but has historically been something I don't allow myself to do.

I wrote him a letter not necessarily explicitly outlining my feelings, but expressing enough of my desire to know him more. And he gently sidestepped my feelings, which was painful but ultimately fine. We were fine for a while as acquaintances that have overlap in our friendships, but he's gotten progressively colder towards me to the point to where we barely directly acknowledge each other. I have no idea what's happened and why this shift has occurred.

I've allowed myself to grieve as much as I know how, but I cannot relinquish him from my mind. I want to move on and fully release this, but I don't know how. It's been over a year, and the percentage of my mind that he still occupies makes me want to scream. I just want to be my normal self, and I don't know how. I want him to be his normal self with me, but that is clearly difficult for whatever reason. I would love your advice.

Jessica: That's intense, and it's heavy. And of course, I read your question, but hearing you read it, I'm really hearing it in a whole other way. So we're not going to share your birth information because people deserve privacy, goddammit. But we will acknowledge you were born in 1992, so you're that millennial generation with the Uranus/Neptune conjunction in Capricorn. So let me get some backstory here. It was a romantic crush, right?

Azalea: Yes.

Jessica: Okay. And do you date boys exclusively?

Azalea: Not exclusively.

Jessica: Okay. So I can use lots of pronouns when talking about love.

Azalea: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: Okay. Great. And have you ever been in a serious relationship?

Azalea: One.

Jessica: Okay. Was it recent?

Azalea: No.

Jessica: Okay. How far back do we go?

Azalea: Early 20s.

Jessica: Okay. Great. Do you want to be in relationships, like in a love relationship?

Azalea: I do. I think I struggle with whether or not⁠—not that it's real, but I think I don't want to feel like I have to have romantic partnership to feel whole. And I really am trying to interrogate my desire because I think that having a full and love-filled life does not have to mean I have romantic relationships.

Jessica: Absolutely.

Azalea: But I would love one.

Jessica: Yeah. Okay. Good. That feels like a good, whole answer. We're going to go deeper in a minute. But in terms of being obsessive⁠—like you fixated on this guy. You were obsessing on him. Is being obsessive with your crushes a kind of normal for you?

Azalea: I really can't say. I don't have crushes.

Jessica: Okay. Let me⁠—okay. Okay. So okay. For the record, see, you are a Virgo, and your Sun is in Virgo in a sandwich between big-picture Jupiter and minutiae details Mercury. Okay? You got a Gemini fucking Moon. So, when you say that you like to interrogate your feelings about relationships, oh yes, you do interrogate, bright light directly over the subject in a dark room kind of interrogation. You are analyzing, analyzing details, details, details, big picture, big picture. You don't stop thinking.

You have a Leo Rising, beautiful Leo Rising. But it has Pluto square to it. And so, for you, you⁠—yeah. "Interrogate" is the perfect word for what you do. It's terrible. It's very painful. I mean, listen. I don't know if you're in therapy. Therapists love you. You're the perfect candidate for therapy. But I want to say that your self-awareness, your analysis⁠—strong, so strong. And so that is a beautiful thing, and we don't want to criticize that. We want to say 100 percent yes to that.

And also⁠—and also, right? And also, your ability to analyze and interrogate and determine and assess can override your access to emotion. And so I'm not stunned to hear that you've had kind of an obsessive fixation because if the feelings and the thoughts were in alignment, then I could see why you'd be like, "Okay, but the only way to figure this out is to figure this out. And if I figure this out, then I can figure it out."

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. I'm sorry about that. So this is my question for you. Do you want me to give you a reading about this dumb boy or about this issue of obsessiveness or both?

Azalea: Maybe both. I don't know that I feel in general that I have issues with obsessiveness. And if I do, I feel like⁠—I think part of it is I'm very good at squashing things. I let my mind go, go and go and go and go, and oh, how it goes. Usually, I can reach a point to where I can say, "All done. Okay." Maybe it takes a couple times for me to say, "All done," but I shut that shit down.

Jessica: Right.

Azalea: And I think that part of the reason the obsession just has exploded, the fixation has exploded about this person⁠—there's lots of reasons⁠—is because I can't shut it down. I don't know how.

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah.

Azalea: It propels me even further.

Jessica: Correct. The fact that it's so out of control⁠—

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: ⁠—just by virtue of it being out of control makes it more out of control.

Azalea: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: I going to start by having you say your full name out loud for me.

Azalea: [redacted].

Jessica: Interesting. Okay. So, as soon as I look at you energetically, your mind is like a meat grinder. Just⁠—crank is going and going and going and going and going and going. Oh my God. And then I'm seeing this line, and underneath it is just anxiety, panic, anxiety. It's like nervous system dysregulation and also like, "I don't know. I don't know. Ah. I don't know. Ah. Ah."

Azalea: Totally. I love it. With the little screams, too. I was going to say, is it okay if I scream quietly?

Jessica: Yes.

Azalea: Is that podcast appropriate? Because yep.

Jessica: That's amazing. Okay. Good. Yeah. That's what it looks like. I mean, it's really just⁠—on the one hand, you're just a highly analytic Virgo with a Gemini Moon, right? On the one hand, that is just your nature. And on the other hand, what you have done is what most people do by your age, which is you have overdeveloped certain coping mechanisms because they work, and yet they are no longer working at the level that you've got them.

So this meat grinder, which is analysis, discernment, analysis, discernment, all the things separate from you so that you can look at it and think about it and analyze it⁠—that coping mechanism is, at this time⁠—you've broken the dial. It goes up to ten, but you broke it trying to keep it at ten or push it past ten. And so now it actually produces anxiety for you. And there's something that happened⁠—was this guy older?

Azalea: No.

Jessica: Does he have an older vibe?

Azalea: Yes.

Jessica: Okay. He's kind of got a very square energy about him, like very stable.

Azalea: Absolutely.

Jessica: So, when that guy came through your life, you have a lot of walls, and he got past your walls somehow, like Tinkerbell style, weirdly flew in where you didn't think there was a crack, and he got in. And you felt him emotionally and physically.

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: Maybe it was sexual, but it wasn't even really specifically about sex.

Azalea: No.

Jessica: It was about vibes, sparkles and vibes. Then he actually is like a person that is technically safe, right?

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: He's a square.

Azalea: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: And so the combination made you feel safe enough to show up. And when you showed up, something happened that you rarely experience because you rarely show up, which is everything was great. Everything was fine. And then you thought, "Oh, this feeling of sparkle and this feeling of being safe in my own skin⁠—I have to attribute it to this man because I don't experience it with other people." Should I even call him a man? Is he like more of a boy?

Azalea: Boy. Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. Let's call him a boy. Okay. I felt wrong saying "man" somehow.

Azalea: No, you know what's funny? I also felt that switcheroo because, initially, I was like, "Man. This is a man." And then I started to see behind, and I was like, "Oh, no." Yeah.

Jessica: No. Mm-mm.

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: You confused his very structured squareness for maturity and accountability.

Azalea: Yes. I sure did.

Jessica: Yeah. That's a fair mistake. Honestly, it's a fair mistake. Here's the part that's really important. You attributed your ability to feel to him. You absconded ownership of your own capacity to feel things when you drop your defenses, even though you did it by accident with this person. And it turns out that you actually enjoy being real with people.

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: You don't give yourself the opportunity because you're too busy protecting yourself so much of the time. And so, instead of being like, "Huh. Oh, I've just learned something about myself, and also, I have a crush on a person," you were like, "Huh. I've learned that I'm capable of being this person when I'm with that person." And you gave him power. And there's a part of your⁠—again, we're back to your meat grinder coping mechanisms that⁠—the way that this is showing up to me is something that I typically see with people who get involved in cults and get obsessed with guru figures or people who are going to fix them, heal them, give them all the answers. Does that make sense, what I'm saying?

Azalea: I think so. He definitely has that about him. That was something that was really obvious to me, that it's not something he's doing on purpose.

Jessica: It's just who he is.

Azalea: He just has this thing, and he sees people really well. And people arrange themselves around him. And I did not want to, but I found myself doing that as well.

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's charisma. We're talking about charisma. But none of this is⁠—he's not important to me because he's not the point. And I think⁠—I say this to you as your psychic and your astrologer⁠—he's not the point now, and he never was the point. He's not the point. The point is you. The point is that you have been in this period of your life characterized by not one, but two major once-in-a-lifetime Neptune transits where you gave someone power because instead of recognizing your capacity to feel had evolved, you attributed him all the power for stimulating your capacity to feel.

And so, instead of being like, "Okay. Whatever. I have these feelings for this person. It's not working. It's not going to work. Now I know him better, and I realize he's not whatever⁠—what I want him to be"⁠—instead of being like, "Okay. My system is going to get off of him," what ended up happening was your system was so focused on, "I want to feel that way. I want to feel that way again. I want to feel that way, and it has to be through him because it's the only way that I know how to do it safely." And so this is where I'm seeing the⁠—I mean, I'm going to use the word "attachment," but it is really fixation more than attachment, isn't it?

Azalea: Yes.

Jessica: It's more like pinchers, pinchery pinchers.

Azalea: I think what is frustrating is I feel like I called this in myself initially because the year that I was having when I met him was really intense, and I was trying to⁠—the point of what I was emotionally going through was so that I could feel again. I was letting myself⁠—I kind of lived my life not allowing myself to grieve. I think most people live their life that way. And I had gotten to a place where I just⁠—I couldn't hope. I couldn't dream. And I realized it was because I'd turned off⁠—completely turned off⁠—my capacity to feel. And so I was turning things back on. And what it meant is I just had a lifetime worth of grief that I had to process through.

Jessica: Yeah.

Azalea: And it was deeply painful and very, very, very hard. And at the end, it was like even that I'd formed the attachment at all⁠—I was so proud of myself because I'd recognized it as, "You've done it. You've restored your ability to feel again."

Jessica: Yeah. Here's the next part we have to add. You're really controlling when it comes to you.

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. And the reason why you're controlling⁠—I mean, you just named it, right? You don't want to feel the grief. You have a Pluto in Scorpio conjunction to the IC. Pluto is at the fucking root of your chart. You have an epigenetic connection to grief, and there's a certain epigenetic line in your family that has a really strong pull on you. Having Pluto on an angle⁠—that's not what we call, in the astrology game, "easy." And Pluto's also squaring your Ascendant opposite your Midheaven. Uranus has been opposing your Pluto. So it's been just taking all this grief that's in your epigenetics, in your body, just in your past, and just spontaneously just⁠—like a dog ripping apart an expensive couch, just a mess everywhere.

And your most effective tried-and-true coping mechanisms is to think about it, figure it out, make the best determination, and then go. That, of course, hasn't been working. And so you've been developing more tools for being in the emotion and being in the unknown. But there's only so many tools a person can develop all at once. I mean, let's not be unrealistic. It just was too much all at once. And so, when Mr. Tinkerbell⁠—the square Tinkerbell, if I will⁠—came in, it was just like you had level-jumped at the beginning is how it felt. You had just fucking level-jumped, and it was so great. Say his full name.

Azalea: [redacted].

Jessica: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, good on you. I can see it now. He's who you are.

Azalea: We're the same.

Jessica: Yeah. It was like you were like, "Oh. That's who I am for other people." And you liked him, which means you like you.

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: The good news is none of this is about him. The bad news is, as much as you do not want this obsession⁠—and I believe you that you do not want to feel what you feel for him; you do not want your thoughts to return to him. There is a part of you that is really just terrified of giving yourself the gift of liking yourself and trusting yourself.

Azalea: Can you unpack that some more?

Jessica: Absolutely. So he's a boy, and he's who he is. So he just marched into your little world, and he was like, "Hello. I am both Tinkerbell and a square. I am both magical and hold space for who you are and how you are, but I am also deeply dependable and reliable. I am not a threat." You liked every single part of that. That was a yes, yes, yes, yes for you. It looks to me like when you tap into other people and you see them for who they are, you do not experience it as a gift. You experience it as a survival mechanism.

Azalea: I think I didn't know for a really long time that other people don't do that.

Jessica: So you didn't notice that everyone else wasn't doing that for you?

Azalea: (laughs)

Jessica: (laughs)

Azalea: No.

Jessica: Okay. Okay. You did notice that everyone wasn't doing that for you.

Azalea: But I think that⁠—and it's something that I've had to learn. I think I just assumed people were depriving me of that.

Jessica: Okay. That's the self-esteem thing I'm referring to. Instead of recognizing, like, oh, you met this man and you were⁠—man-boy, whatever⁠—and you were like, "Oh, he's special." But then, when you're doing it, it's not because you're special. It's because it's the bare minimum.

Azalea: I knew that word was going to come up.

Jessica: Yeah, you did. Yeah, you did. So we're starting with that.

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: When you look at the identical qualities in this stupid boy⁠—he's not completely stupid, but partially, right?

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: Right. Yeah. You see it as special. You see it as special. But when you see it in yourself, bare minimum. Okay. That's a self-esteem problem.

Azalea: But I think I'm great.

Jessica: Okay. This is good. And let's⁠—yes. Let's take a moment to be like, "Fuck yeah." You have a Jupiter/Sun conjunction. Jupiter/Sun conjunction people, first of all, were wanted by their parents. That's always like⁠—you got a Moon/Jupiter conjunction. You've got a Sun/Jupiter conjunction. Your parents wanted you. And even if your parents were terrible parents, even if it was a terrible time, there's something special about being a wanted child.

And then it extends this Jupiter/Sun conjunction into giving you a resiliency and giving you⁠—Jupiter brings the Sun some warmth, some heat, some juj. So being yourself feels really good. So you liking you⁠—yes. I see it in your chart. I love to hear you say it. And we don't want to lose it. Here's the "but." The "but" is that you can overintellectualize that. So you just said it to me, and you meant it when you said it. But when I asked you if the same special qualities in him were special in you, it was just like it hadn't even computed, really, this thing. Does this make sense, what I'm saying?

Azalea: Absolutely.

Jessica: Okay.

Azalea: It was kind of a new thought. I guess I didn't assume that it was the same thing.

Jessica: Except for that you knew that you're the identical person, pretty much. So okay. So okay. So the lies we tell ourselves is fine. It's fine. I accept. I accept. I accept. So here's the thing. You've got this beautiful Sun/Jupiter conjunction. People like you. You like people. You know how to get along. It's great. You're smart. You're good smart. You're adaptable smart. You can be smart at work. You can be smart at school. And then you can also be smart in social situations. You've got an adaptive kind of intelligence. Yay. Okay. So does he, by the way. You love that about him. Okay. We won't⁠—yes. But that's because you like that about you, nerd. So okay. Wait. We're going to come⁠—sorry.

Azalea: No, it's good.

Jessica: Okay. Okay. But we're not done.

Azalea: The nerd especially. Thank you.

Jessica: The nerd is true. You're welcome.

Azalea: Yeah. Thank you.

Jessica: We're calling it as it is. Okay. So here's the thing. Pluto is square your Ascendant. So Leo Rising⁠—you walk into a room, and people feel your fucking energy. Best of luck hiding in any space. It doesn't work for you. You got a Leo Rising. You have Jupiter and the Sun in the first house. You can't hide. If you're physically present, people are going to feel you. Right? Great. So wonderful. You've got a Jupiter/Sun conjunction. That's fine. You like yourself⁠—nah, because Pluto squares your Ascendant. So you are scared of being revealed. And you're not scared of being revealed for some Virgo⁠—like, "Oh, do people think I'm smart?" No.

It's you're scared of being destroyed. You're scared of some sort of move that reveals something utterly shameful about you or that puts you in real, raw danger. Fucking Pluto at the IC. Let's add another layer. You have this Venus that⁠—I'm looking at this chart, and this is why it's always important to do the math for yourself as an astrology student because your Venus⁠—it looks like it's an unaspected Venus. That's not true. It's not true at all. Your Venus is square to Neptune.

That makes you super idealistic, and it gives you a tendency to put people on a pedestal⁠—not you, just others on a pedestal, against all your better judgment. And you have a lot of better judgment. But it's a romantic habit. It gives you a bit of a devotional form of like and love, whether it's friends or lovers. And it also spikes social anxiety. It's not nervous system anxiety. It's panic. "Do I belong? Where do I begin? Where do I end? What do I say? Did I dress wrong for this event?" It gives you that kind of anxiety.

So, yes, you like yourself, and you know yourself. And you're generous and warm, and people like you. And you know all of that. And also, you're dealing with these other things. And so what do you do? You do what anyone with this combination would do. You lean towards your head because it's that part of you that feels more resilient. But the problem is, if we imagine that walking through life is like⁠—I don't know⁠—walking on a city street, walking on a path, then every time you abandon parts of yourself⁠—we'll call the part of yourself that is the Pluto/Ascendant square as, like, some pretty heavy bags that you carry around. Every time you're like, "Oh, I feel really vulnerable at this street corner. I'm just going to drop my heavy bags, and I'm going to focus on my head instead," when you're ready to pick them up again, they're exactly where you left them. They haven't developed alongside your big, beautiful brain.

And this is why, in the past couple years, you have been like, "Oh shit. I need to catch up emotionally with how much I've developed elsewhere in my life."

Azalea: Yes.

Jessica: So here's the fucking boner of the situation. Emotional and spiritual development is the easiest to fall by the wayside for all of us, honestly, because of the world we live in. But for you, your greatest struggles are around that emotional/spiritual stuff because it's not just about your emotions. We're dealing with a lot of epigenetic and energetic issues as at the core of your struggle. And because of that, you look around your life with your big, beautiful brain and you're like, "Nothing's wrong. What's wrong with me? Nothing's wrong. If nothing's wrong, something's wrong with me. I'm inherently wrong."

And it's a very good⁠—I mean, it's a logical assessment. It's very surface, but it is a logical assessment that can keep you trapped. And so you start working on your shit. You say to the Universe and yourself and your guides and your ancestors and everything else, "I'm going to work on my emotions." So you focused on grief, obviously, because Pluto's at the bottom of your chart. But it's not just grief. It's all the emotions. I mean, we can't experience love truly without experiencing grief. You don't experience grief for things you don't love, right? So they're intertwined.

So you started experiencing grief. You started experiencing your emotions. And then what happened? Some fucking Tinkerbell vibes came in, and you felt the stirrings of love. You're not in love with him. You don't even know him. But you felt the stirrings of love. And your survival mechanisms did this clamp. They just clamped the fuck down. They just were like, "Nope. We're going to pull this down. We're going to shut it down." And this actually led, from my perspective, to obsession and fixation because if you turn away from yourself and you focus on the thing that's making you feel, it is far easier than dealing with the depth⁠—and I forget exactly how I said it at the beginning where you're like, "No, that doesn't sound exactly right."

But this is really about making room for you to be truly happy, to have love, because in order to have love and happiness⁠—and there's lots of different ways to experience love and happiness. But it is falling out of control. It's like falling in love. You fall, which is an unpredictable and violent action, realistically. And you're okay with unpredictable in very finite and controlled circumstances. And so, I mean, when I look at this fixation that you've been experiencing, I see that you're fucking distraught over it. You are not okay with it. It's not like you're like, "Oh, this is easier to have a fixation on someone else than to feel love." I'm not suggesting that. That's bananas.

But what I am suggesting is that to your coping mechanisms, it's the devil you already know. You already know how to deal with, "I'm not happy. I'm not safe. There's nothing for me to do except for suffer." I mean, gold star. You're good. You got skills. And what had happened was you had gotten to this part of your spiritual and emotional development where the Universe was like, "Okay. Here's something new. Deal or no deal?" And you kind of made a bad deal with yourself.

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. And that's okay. You did what you could do. Now, we gotta come back to this fucking boy. Say his name again for me.

Azalea: [redacted].

Jessica: I mean, okay. Sorry. Every time, I think I'm going to see something different than I'm seeing, but it is fascinating to me. You just got a crush on yourself in boy form. I am shocked. I am shocked. Even what I want to shit-talk about him, I could say that you are similar in those ways.

Azalea: Totally. It's a little embarrassing.

Jessica: I know it's a little embarrassing. I'm seeing it. It's shocking how similar the two of you are. Even his weird avoidance⁠—

Azalea: Yes.

Jessica: Have you seen yourself? Yes. I mean, this is like if somebody had a crush on you and you didn't know what to do about it, you would avoid them.

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: Just because that would be your default coping mechanism, right?

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: That's not even about them. It's about you.

Azalea: Right.

Jessica: If nothing else comes of this reading, I do really hope that you sit with and reflect on that the Universe gave you somebody who's cute and whatever, whatever⁠—but it was basically boy you, like, to-the-bone boy you. You didn't see it. I mean, when I first said it, you were like, "Yeah, he's just like me. We're basically the same person." But it didn't make you like you better. It made you like him more but not you more.

Azalea: Absolutely.

Jessica: Here's the thing. At the beginning of this crush you got to experience was, "Huh. Maybe it's worth it. Maybe it's worth it." But then your most tried and true coping mechanisms took over because you don't have the emotional and the energy boundary coping mechanisms at a ten or an eight or a seven. They're built on a solid three right now. And that's good.

Azalea: Oof.

Jessica: No, no. That's actually really good. That's really good because it is fucking hard work for all humans, even people who come from easy-peasy, "nothing ever happened in my family history" backgrounds. That's not you. It's not you. And your capacity for feeling is very deep. Anyone who feels really deeply is appropriately motivated to not feel like shit. And what happened was you started to really feel special and good, and you held on to it. And then you held a little too tight, and then you become attached. And then, at a certain point, it wasn't even about the thing that it was originally about. It was just about the attachment to the good thing.

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: And it hurt because too much of a good thing is always a bad thing. I mean, we all know that. And so this brings me to the other part, which is part of developing the emotional chops to be able to have vulnerable experiences, for you, I think is about identifying what you want⁠—not a plan that you're 100 percent going to keep, but really identifying what you want. Make a list in your dear diary about, what are the characteristics that your partner would have to have? Like somebody, for instance, who is like a magical time person, somebody who's not good at telling the time or doing things when they say they will⁠—not well suited to you.

So the positive of that is somebody who's really good at telling time and working within material time⁠—that is important to you. So you can, like, write out a list of all the qualities to work it out in your thinking so that you're clear about what you're actually open to and what you're not because I think part of what your survival mechanisms are doing is they're holding you back from painful experiences. Like should you even bother to get into a relationship and experience all that fucking vulnerability if you're just going to have to deal with this? Right now, your survival mechanisms say no. That's a terrible fucking idea.

When we're talking about a partnership, we're talking about two whole people that complement and support each other, not like somebody's other half. We're talking about two whole people. And you cannot control the people of America. You can cultivate more⁠—not mental self-awareness, although it's that. It's more emotional self-awareness. What do I want? What do I feel? What do I need? Because then, if you meet somebody who's not a Tinkerbell but is a real boy or a real whatever gender that you're into dating, then your survival mechanisms don't need to shut it down or self-sabotage as a way to keep you safe because that's your sharpest weapon in your tool kit, basically.

So wait. Is the fixation, is the crush, still active?

Azalea: It ebbs and flows. I have moments where I'm like, "I've released it. Very good. Very nice." And then part of it is⁠—and I think this really speaks to what you were saying about just where I'm at emotionally⁠—is I have not yet learned how to transition well when things aren't resolved. And so I think I would love to just be friends, but I don't know that he knows how to do that. And it really hurts my feelings.

Jessica: Okay. There's a couple things that you said, and I want to respond to all them. First of all, you have three planets in Virgo. Yeah, you don't like things messy on the counter, which⁠—let's dispel the myth that Virgos are tidy. Sometimes they are; sometimes they're not. Virgos are particular. They're not clean; they're particular, first of all. But you're particular. You want there to be consent, verbal consent and clarity around the dynamic, and you're never going to get that with this guy, just heads-up, okay? And part of the reason why is because you told him how you felt in the most analytic, safe, distant way a human possibly could.

Azalea: I thought I did a very nice job.

Jessica: You did a great job. But also, was it a letter on paper?

Azalea: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: Yeah. And it was, like, left?

Azalea: It was, like, handled overtly, except this.

Jessica: Yes, which is really different than⁠—hear me out⁠—being like, "Hey, do you want to go get ice cream?" or like, "Hey, do you want to grab a beer?" and then having a conversation and gently interjecting exactly the contents of that letter.

Azalea: He wouldn't have let me.

Jessica: He wouldn't have let you what?

Azalea: He would not have allowed me to get him into situation where I could even steer the conversation in that⁠—I would say he's more controlling in that regard than I am.

Jessica: What I would say to that is any human adult, especially male, who is going to be so controlling as to not allow you to name an emotion is not crush-worthy. Don't you fucking dare date a man who doesn't allow space for you to say how you feel.

Azalea: Damn.

Jessica: That's a terrible idea. Tinkerbell⁠—gone, dead, no more vibes. Does that make sense, what I'm saying?

Azalea: No, it does. I think my brain is trying to edit in all of these other things. It's because it's the same for me, right? It's not because he doesn't want me to express my feelings. It's just because he doesn't know what to do with them.

Jessica: It doesn't matter what it's because. How about this? I'm going to interrupt you.

Azalea: That's fine.

Jessica: I'm going to interject, okay? Let's say you and I were hanging out, not on a Zoom, but we were hanging out in the same house, and every couple of minutes, I just stomped on your foot. But don't worry; I do it because of childhood trauma. Is that okay? Is that all right for you?

Azalea: (laughs)

Jessica: I'm actually forcing you to answer the question if that's okay for you. Like if you really know I was terribly abused as a child, and it involved foot stomping, and it's just what I do when I'm really close to people, is it okay that I stomp on your foot every few minutes?

Azalea: (laughs) I think it could be.

Jessica: Uh-huh. That's a problem. That's your problem, not my problem. My problem is foot stomping. Your problem is that's⁠—no. Mm-mm. No. It's really important⁠—and I hope the certainty and clarity with which I mean this rubs off on you. It is really important that you know that having empathy for the fact that I come from terrible abuse that led me to think the only way to be around a person I care about is to stomp on their foot⁠—that just because you can have empathy and understanding and compassion for where I'm coming from doesn't mean you should eat my shit.

Azalea: Absolutely.

Jessica: Technically, absolutely. Technically, absolutely.

Azalea: No. In actuality, absolutely.

Jessica: Okay.

Azalea: I think what I struggle with is⁠—I'm very good at boundaries. Well, I go back and forth. I feel like I've been better at my boundaries. But since reintroducing feelings⁠, I'm trying to allow more space for messiness and other people's feelings because Lord knows I'm very messy right now. And so it's not that I will tolerate harm.

Jessica: You were going to let me stomp on your foot. Even though that was objectively a setup, you still, when you were being honest, were like, "Yeah, I'd let you stomp on my foot."

Azalea: Yeah. I think I would. Not all the time. But never?

Jessica: Okay. So I used that metaphor⁠—we're getting in there. I'm going to push back. I used that metaphor because it was so stupid and so aggressive and so unwarranted. It wasn't every time⁠—I thought about it. I know I talk fast, but I thought about it. I wasn't like, "Every time you bring up politics, I stomp on your foot." It was just of no provocation, just every few minutes. And you thought about it, and you said, "Okay." And then you told me you have pretty good boundaries. Now, listen. I think there are ways that you have good boundaries. That is evidence of not. Again, I'm going to push back on you here because I chose a ridiculous example.

Azalea: Right. And I'm trying to go with you there and answer honestly, right? Because⁠—

Jessica: Yeah. That's it. Yes. That's what we're here for. Let me flip this around. Let me flip it around. Bear with me. Let's say you and I are hanging out. We're in the kitchen together right now, okay? We hang out all the time. Whatevs. We're cool with each other. Every time you get insecure, you stop talking to me and you look at your phone, and you scroll through your phone. And if I'm like, "Hey, Azalea, what are you doing?" you just ignore me completely and you look at your phone. Is that okay?

Azalea: No.

Jessica: So I can stomp on your foot, but you can't look at your phone? Do you see where I'm going?

Azalea: Not yet.

Jessica: Oh shit. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. No, no, no, no. This is good. This is very good. So your responsibility to me is to give me your attention and to treat me with decency and respect, right? Is that correct?

Azalea: Yes.

Jessica: You feel that that's your responsibility, yeah?

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. Is my responsibility to you to treat you with respect and to be consistent and present?

Azalea: Yes.

Jessica: Do you mean that?

Azalea: I think that I get what I get.

Jessica: Okay. Did you hear yourself say that?

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. So I'm going to tell you a story. I was dating somebody, okay? This is me. I was dating somebody. They were really disrespectful all the time, and they made me sad all the time. I got what I got, and it was fine with me. It was fine. Okay. You heard it. Okay. Okay. This is good. Actually, this is very good because you, with all of your intelligence⁠—and you have a lot, a lot of different kinds of intelligence. You're very smart. You fucking doubled down on it's okay if I stomp on your foot for no reason. Does that sound any different now, or are you just laughing because I'm fucking with you a little bit?

Azalea: No. No, it makes sense.

Jessica: Does it sound different?

Azalea: It does sound different.

Jessica: Okay. Before you defend it⁠—sorry. I'm going to interrupt you again. We're coming back to how we started this conversation. This motherfucker⁠—pardon me, but this guy, this very nice little Tinkerbell, sweet whatever⁠—is so rigid that he wouldn't allow space for you to be like, "Hey, I have a feeling."

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: That is him stomping on your foot. That is what that is, whether you're doing it to someone else or they're doing it to you. Now, what you do to other people is not the same thing.

Azalea: Right.

Jessica: Sorry. It's in the family of it. You can identify with it, but it's not the same thing. When people tell you how they feel and it makes you feel vulnerable, you get weird you fill the space with too much talking.

Azalea: Oh yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. Okay. You get weird. You get awkward. You go full nerd mode, talk too much. That's not what he does. That's not why you gave him a letter instead of talk to him. Am I right?

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: So both of those things, your behavior and his behavior, your patterns and his pattern, are a result of not knowing how to navigate your own feelings and your own vulnerability. One is awkward. That's yours. The other is isolating, controlling, and mean.

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: That's his. And the fact is he's not that great. Nobody's worth that. Here's the next step, and you're already in it. Now you have to feel sad. You have to feel more fucking grief⁠—I'm so sorry⁠—and sadness because of the ways that you betrayed yourself with this crush more than because of him. You already mourned the loss of him. You never really had him. You don't actually know him. What you haven't fully processed yet is the way that this experience revealed things to you about yourself that you feel uncomfortable with.

And there is a way that this crush is a little bit of a self-betrayal, not because you're vulnerable and not because you have feelings, but because some of the ways that he is that are shit⁠—they're just shit. You told yourself and believed when it started and here today in this very room⁠—well, we're both in separate rooms, but in this very emotional room, you've told yourself that's fine. And that is connected to the core grief you were working with before you met this fucking dude.

The Universe provides. You say to the Universe, "I would like to make a deal," and the Universe is like, "Okay. Here's a shitty deal." What do you do? Accept it? Reject it? You said, "I accept." Okay. That's only a barometer. It's not a sentence, right? I mean like a death sentence. It's not that kind of a sentence. It's simply a barometer. And at this moment, it's like you've been just circling, circling, circling something inside of yourself. "What do I deserve? Do I deserve to be here? Do I actually deserve to be here? Do I actually get love? Do I get like? Do I get passion? Is it worth the cost? I don't know." You've been circling this.

And this fixation on this fantasy of a person, who is not even that great now that we look a little under the hood⁠—it's allowed you to stay stuck. And you know what? That's its own gift. You've needed to stay a little stuck. Maybe theoretically, you wish you weren't. It doesn't matter. This is where you've been, and it's okay to have been here. It really, really, really is okay. And the way you're going to get out has nothing to do with him, like zero percent. It only has to do with you being able to sit with, look at, be honest about⁠—whatever⁠—that you are willing to let me stomp on your foot and call it friendship, but you can't even scroll through your fucking phone, which also isn't a great thing to do, obviously⁠—but the levels. The levels, right?

The problem with emotional intelligence is that it doesn't matter what the theory is. It just doesn't. And in order to allow yourself to be loved, in order to take the risk to be in the fucking messy chaos that is interpersonal relationships, you need to have emotional boundaries. You don't need; I mean it helps a lot to have emotional boundaries. And you have a deep and driving compulsion to not be embarrassed, to not show certain colors. You do not have that same drive towards being treated with love and respect or treating yourself with love and respect.

Azalea: Say some more.

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah.

Azalea: It makes sense, but yeah, say some more, please.

Jessica: I saw your little face. I saw your little face. So your drive to not be embarrassed⁠—every time I've said that, you've been like, "Yep. I'm here. That's my name."

Azalea: Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica: Right. Okay. When I say a drive to be treated with respect, every time I've said that, including just now, your energy goes, "Huh?" like a cartoon dog. You know what I'm talking about?

Azalea: I do.

Jessica: Just like you don't get it at all, like you have no idea what I'm talking about. Okay. Now we're starting to understand. So, "I don't want to be ashamed. I don't want to be embarrassed. I don't want to be hurt"⁠— clear as fucking day. Every part of you understands. "I want to be treated with respect"⁠—you have no idea what I'm talking about. "I want to be treated with love"⁠—you get very confused because you're not prioritizing those things in your relationship to yourself. You are prioritizing the appearance of those things. "I don't want to be embarrassed. I don't want to fail." But the appearance⁠—it's valuable. I'm a Capricorn. I'm not going to tell you the appearance of not failing is nothing, obviously.  I fucking care. It's about holding it proportionately. On a scale from 1 to 10, "I don't want to be embarrassed" is a 12. Right?

Azalea: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: And on a scale from 1 to 10, "I want to treat myself with respect, and I only want to be in relationships where I'm treated with respect" isn't on the list yet.

Azalea: That's fair. That's fair.

Jessica: Yeah? Okay. Okay.

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: And so here's the thing about Pluto. Pluto is our driving survival mechanisms and emotions. And some of our survival mechanisms, our core survival mechanisms⁠—they're just⁠—it's what we have. It's what we're born with. It's related to epigenetics and early developmental experiences, and that's what the fuck it is. But we can develop survival mechanisms. And we can't develop them by getting rid of the ones we already have. That's very slow work. But you can add in. You can add in. So we don't want to subtract. We want to add. And Virgo can do that. It can add in more data.

And so assessing are you treating yourself like you love yourself⁠—that needs to be in your fucking questionnaire, in every questionnaire you pose to yourself on every topic. Are you treating myself like you love yourself? What's actually happening inside your head? Because you're nodding yes, but energetically, I'm not seeing that it makes any sense. So tell me what I'm picking up on.

Azalea: I'm processing. So I agree. I think that it's very common for me to go through the meat grinder. And I start fixating on words, and I ask, "What does that mean? What does that mean? What does she mean when she says"⁠—you know. And then I look at behaviors, and I put the word next to it. I say, "Is that respect? I thought so. Is that not respect?" And so that's kind of⁠—and then I'm qualifying⁠—

Jessica: Some of that is in your nature and your personality and your smart. And never stop, I beg of you. It makes you weird. It makes you you. Okay? That's the first thing I want you to really hear. The second thing I want you to hear is that all of that is you⁠—it's your coping mechanism for distancing yourself from feeling. When I say respect and you're like, "What does she mean by respect? Is respect a puppy dog? Is respect a kitty?"⁠—when you start doing that whole thing you're talking about, now you're not feeling. Now you're not present. Now you're in your head. Now you're distance, distance, distance.

So Virgonian analysis can be like⁠—you know how in Snow White, the cartoon⁠—have you ever seen it?

Azalea: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: Okay⁠—how the evil queen holds the apple in her hand, and she holds it up a bit so she has to cock her head? And then she looks up at the apple, and she inspects the poison apple.

Azalea: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: Fucking Virgo analysis. That's what you just described. "Respect? What does it mean? What is this word? How do I know?" Listen. You've got it. You've got it. Having this form of analysis is your personality. It is your nature. It is a strength. And that is a good thing that you're a critical thinker. But I've experienced a couple times in our conversation how, all of a sudden, you don't understand really simple words and simple concepts.

Azalea: Ahh.

Jessica: Sorry. But that's not because you don't, because obviously, you know what respect means.

Azalea: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: You know what love is.

Azalea: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: You don't have a practice of being emotionally present and applying those things to you. And so, instead of being with what you would actually experience when I talk about those things, which is sadness, grief⁠—that's what you feel if you really start⁠—and I'm not telling you to tap into it in this moment, because we're keeping it high vibes. But if you were to actually feel your relationship to respect and love in how you talk to yourself and how you let others treat you, you will feel grief, which is why all your survival mechanisms are like, "Point the apple up. Point the apple away. Analyze the apple."

It's a coping mechanism, and it's a good one. It's just, if you're not aware that you're using a coping mechanism and you can't titrate how much you're using it, how intensely it's functioning, then you're in trouble. So it's not about "Throw away the coping mechanism." It's⁠—when I say respect and love, and you're like, "Huh?"⁠—that is because your coping mechanism has hit a ten when it should be at a two. Use your analytic analysis to process data instead of, all of a sudden, your emotional intelligence⁠—out the window. And now you're just getting hyper-focused on language.

And this is only going to happen when you're emotionally triggered. It's not going to happen when you're not emotionally triggered, because we could be having a conversation about something social and I could talk about being treated with love and respect, and you'd know exactly what the fuck I meant and how I meant it and how to apply it with flexibility and adaptability. Right?

Azalea: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: Yeah. When it comes to more personal stuff, because Pluto's at the bottom of your chart, this is where it feels just so survival mechanismy that your self-defense mechanisms go on high alert, and then you become separated from the experience. Is this making more sense?

Azalea: Absolutely.

Jessica: Okay.

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: So I want to just slow us down because we're getting at that point where you're starting to spin out, and then you're not going to retain what we say.

Azalea: (laughs)

Jessica: Yeah? Okay. Okay. Good. That's good.

Azalea: Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica: So this is where you are emotionally tapped. Now, all that Mercury in your chart is going to say, "Wait. No, no, no, no, no. I can always take more data. I can always take more data." And you can. I agree. But we're talking about your emotions. And we've already accessed so much for you to process and work with. It is enough for now, as we say, because now you're losing yourself a little bit. The meat grinder is not even grinding anymore. It's just like it's overwhelming. So I want to just name that's happening, and it is okay to have a fucking limit. My darling, you are allowed to be like, "Oh yeah. I can feel the limit of mine." That feels sad, bad, wrong?

Azalea: Do I? I guess I'm trying to assess, do I feel the limit? I think I feel the shutdown. It doesn't feel bad. I think that it's like I want to sift and explore within myself to understand what you're saying more, and also recognize I think that a lot of what you're saying is true, but part of it is I think I'm also caught in this loop of, how am I translating the experiences in my life, then? If I'm kind of confused about what constitutes as love and respect, what do I think is happening when people are interacting with me?

Jessica: Okay. So what you're doing⁠—what do you do for living?

Azalea: Right now, I'm a full-time student finishing my⁠—

Jessica: Okay. And what are you studying?

Azalea: I am getting my master's of divinity. I'm going to do hospice chaplaincy.

Jessica: Good for you. That's exciting. Okay. You are trying to do too much at once. So, if what you are doing is having⁠—we're having a conversation. Technically speaking, we're talking. Right? We're talking. And there's a lot for you to cognitively sort through. But also, I'm psychic-ing you, and you're getting a reading, and you're getting a form of therapy, right?

Azalea: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: So this is more of an emotional experience than a cognitive experience, as much as it is a cognitive experience. Right? So what you're trying to do is keep on bringing it back up to, "Let me analyze"⁠— so we're back to the poison apple, unfortunately. So, "Let me analyze all the ways this plays out in my life. Let me analyze my positionality to it." This is a habit you have that you only apply to things that are hard for you to emotionally process, you don't apply to things that you're learning at school that make sense to you.

On an emotional and spiritual level, you accept those things. So you don't have to analyze them in the same way as you're learning them because your system is allowing the free exchange of data between your layers. And what I started to feel before was like your brains were getting a little more scattered, and you were agreeing with me that I felt that happening as it was happening, right?

Azalea: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: And what I'm suggesting is that's because your emotions hit this wall where it's like that's all that you can process for now. And your brain is like, "Let me figure this out. Wait. Wait. Let's go back a few steps, and let's analyze it," because you are so habituated on bulldozing your emotional needs and bulldozing your emotional boundaries/limits. Right?

Azalea: Yes.

Jessica: Which is why you're willing to let me stomp on your foot in the kitchen, because that would be me bulldozing your emotional needs and limits.

Azalea: Sure.

Jessica: Yeah. It's coming together.

Azalea: Yeah. No, that⁠—yeah. That makes sense.

Jessica: Yeah. And I don't want us to get too confused with, like⁠—okay. So some of this is like we're being meta. We're in your shit. And some of it is you're getting a reading, and we're coming to the end, and it's like yeah, you don't want the reading to end because you want to get as much information as you can. We have an hour together. Whatever, right?

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: They're separate things, and they're overlapping in this moment. And that's real. So, as we close, I'm going to give you a parting bit of homework. And that's to establish an evaluation system for yourself where you bring yourself through a couple of layers. When you're dealing with anything, whether it's learning something at divinity school, dealing with a friendship, having a rough mental health day and coming to a point where you're like, "Oh, I can finally pull myself out and think about it a little bit"⁠—whatever it is⁠—where you check in with, "Where is my body right now? How does my body actually feel? Where am I feeling what I'm feeling? How do I know I'm feeling it?" kind of thing. "What am I emotionally experiencing right now? How do I know? How is it landing? Where is it landing?"

On an energetic level⁠—and it has to be in this order, okay? Don't you fuck with my order. Okay. So, then on an energetic level, "What am I feeling? Can I clock anything? What am I experiencing right now?" Not, "What do I think?" Not, "What was an hour ago?" "What am I experiencing right now?" And then, "What do I think?" I want you to get embodied before you think.

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: And this little habit you can do in the bathroom, in the middle of the day. You know what I mean? You can create little prompts in your phone to help you remember it. This is a practice. And if you do it consistently over time, what will happen is you won't need to do it. It'll start to become a point of reference inside of yourself because when you were sitting at the kitchen table with me allowing me to stomp on your foot, there was no part of you present. You've abandoned yourself at that point.

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: And you've allowed me to determine what's real and what's important and what's right. And you're just going with it because, "Okay. She's nice. She has trauma. I'll let her stomp on me." Right? Sorry, but it's true. Right.

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: So this is a practice. And I know it seems paradoxical in a way, but this is the path to partnership for you. It's you knowing you, you being present with you so that you can trust yourself enough to let someone in. You don't have to trust other people. Other people are unknown, unquantifiable fucking risks. Again, Capricorn on Virgo violence. We are not going to disagree here, right? But you don't have to trust people. You only have to trust you because if somebody is so rigid that they don't have any space in their life for your emotions, if you are a good friend to you, then you say to yourself, "Oh, darling. Oh, beloved. Oh, sweet, tender heart, it is time to walk away because this is not a safe and healthy place." And it's okay to have feelings about it.

But you being such a good friend to yourself that you say to yourself, "I actually know that that's a pain point that is not healthy for me"⁠—and maybe⁠—I don't know. Maybe you always wear combat boots with steel toe. And so, when I told you I was stomping on your foot, you were like, "Well, that's not going to hurt me because that's not a vulnerable place for me." Or maybe you just wear bare feet in your kitchen a lot, and you were willing to let me stomp on your foot with no protection. We can be more sensitive to some things than others. That's part of knowing yourself and making good choices.

Ultimately, what this all comes back down to is how can you be more present with and for yourself, and how can that help you to navigate intimate relationships over the course of time? That right there is the move. And it's not selfish. Sorry, but it's really not selfish to know yourself, to be present for yourself, and to love people enough to have empathy for them in their pain but love yourself enough to have standards around what kind of conduct to you will invite in and what conduct you will not invite in. Yeah?

Azalea: Yes. When I think about the emotional growth that I've gone through and in sitting with myself and asking myself those types of questions, I think that I'm overwhelmed by doing that kind of work with myself. I have done it in a kind way, and it does work, and it can work quickly. But it also is very, very slow.

Jessica: Yeah.

Azalea: And sometimes I just need to get things done. And so the thought that I had was so much of the advancement that I have felt in my emotional self has kind of come through violence, through self-violence.

Jessica: Being a bully, you mean. Being like a mean bully.

Azalea: No, but maybe I would⁠—I'm tempted to qualify it because I think that I try to be kind to myself, but I describe it as I just have to break myself open. I feel myself close, and I say, "No." Just⁠—it has to be open now.

Jessica: So you break it open.

Azalea: So I break it open.

Jessica: I have a question. If you did have a child⁠—let's say you had a daughter. You see where I'm going, yeah?

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. You feel set up a little bit because you did it to yourself, see. So, if she said, "I break myself open in a violent way, and that's the only way I know how to be open," would you be like, "Good job, kid. Keep going"?

Azalea: No.

Jessica: No. Listen. You're right. It is quicker and more efficient to be violent. You are 100 percent right, and you're not going to hear a disagreement from me about that. But you're not a machine. You're a 31-year-old. And listen to me from 50, okay? That's not going to age well. Do you understand the reason why older people get all twisted up and mean and shut down is because if you don't develop more self-loving and sustainable self-talk and coping skills in your youth, which—you very much are in your youth in your 20s and your 30s⁠—it becomes much harder to make those transitions?

And in your 40s, you go through midlife crisis, and there's lots of things that change up, and you have this really good last hurrah. But the older you are, the harder it is to make a change. It is always possible to change, but this "I have to use violence in order to keep myself open" thing is obviously not how you keep yourself open.

Azalea: Yeah.

Jessica: That's just how you break the glass on the storefront window. What's the goal here? It's to get the business to move. It's to get the business to shut down. It's not actually a door, right? And so, if you're looking for efficiency, keep doing what you're doing. It will stop being efficient one day. But okay. If that's actually the priority, then you're not wrong. But if what you're looking for is sustainable efficiency⁠—and we both know you are⁠—then what you need is a sustainable strategy. And that's going to be the slow one.

I will say you know, because you listen to my podcast, that emotional intelligence is like the centerpiece of what I work on and what is important to me. And I have Sun, Moon, and Rising all in Capricorn. Obviously, it's not natural to me. If you know anything about astrology, you should know it does not come naturally to me. I don't believe that it has to be in your nature, because your nature is to be violent towards yourself, to be aggressive towards yourself. I mean, you have Pluto at the bottom of the chart. Yeah. Sure. Okay.

But you can work with your nature to overcome the parts of your nature that are rooted in self-harm. But you have to do it slowly because there's no other way to do it. There's no other way. The only way you're going to do that is if you prioritize loving yourself⁠—even when you don't feel loving towards yourself, to prioritize the action of love because at the end of the day, love is an action. Love is an action. And hate is not the opposite of love. Apathy is. And when you abandon yourself, it is worse than being hateful towards yourself. And you know this because of the work you do, right? If you're working with people in hospice, you've, I'm sure, seen it.

I wish that self-love was easier. I really do. I really do. It is exceptionally challenging work, and it is the most important work. I will put my flag on any planet that I can to say that. I really do think it is the most important work. And it is okay if you're really bad at it. You don't have to be good at it. You only have to practice it. That's why we call it a practice. It is about the practice of identifying your layers. Start with the body because it's the most objective and tangible, other than your thoughts. You think your thoughts are the most objective and tangible? I put that shit at the end of the list because we can't trust your thoughts until you've found your body, until you've felt your emotions, until you've embraced your spiritual intelligence. Then we can start listening to your big, beautiful brain, your Gemini Moon, all the Virgo in you.

Mercury is a trickster. The planet Mercury, the god Mercury, is a trickster. We cannot always believe what we have analyzed to be true. And yes, we are grounding down. But I will say just one last time I think it is possible that after our conversation, your relationship to the fixation will change, and it'll be sadder. I know that feeling sad and feeling bad and feeling lonely and feeling grief is shit. But it is the healthiest shit that you can be in if it's the truth. And I don't think you're sad about him. I think you're sad about you.

And in all breakups, whether it's a breakup of a crush or a breakup of a relationship, we always mourn the person for a while. But the thing that really takes the most time and is the worst to feel is mourning who you were or who you weren't, who you thought you would be or whatever. And that's where you're at with this, is that there's grief there. And you don't need to analyze it. Don't place words to it. You don't need to. You're not at that stage anymore. It's not necessary. It's just about feeling the feelings and allowing yourself to be very fucking intense about it because you are very intense.

And it's a gift. It's a fucking heavy gift, but it is a gift. So let yourself be that, and don't stomp on your own feet. Don't let anyone else stomp on your feet in the process. And when you've found yourself in a situation where you're like, "Oh, wow. Here's that metaphor playing out in this friendship," or, "I'm, quote unquote, 'taking care of myself' right now, but I'm realizing I'm doing it in kind of an aggressive or violent way," the act of noticing it is transformational.

I know that doesn't seem enough to you, but it is transformational to notice it in the moment. And then to make another choice, even if it's only a teeny, tiny bit, is transformational because progress is progress. And of course, we want to quantify it because⁠—Virgo. But progress is progress. And we don't want to shit on any amount of progress at any time.

You're not running out of time. I'm saying this to you as your astrologer and your psychic. You are not running out of time. You are not behind schedule. You are where you are. This is where you're meant to be. And this is the work you have in this moment. And the more that you kind of⁠—I don't know⁠—beat yourself up about that or try to analyze yourself in or out of acceptance of that, that's the only waste of time. You are where you are. Let yourself be where you are.

Azalea: Thank you so much.