Road Trip Revelations

My dad visits me in the hills of Illinois. Tucked between boulders, nestled against the earth, his spirit winks at me. I hear his voice, his laughter, his cough, his words of encouragement.

I’ve never spent as much time driving in silence as I have on this solo road trip [eclipse season of fall 2022]. Normally, my hours are filled with music and podcasts, but this one has been unusually quiet. The thoughts in my head are loud, bellowing, screaming obscenities — but it all feels muted, as if there’s earplugs of white noise, filtering out the harshness, and only letting in the messages.

Very purposefully, I scheduled a solo road trip to land after an eclipse in my 12th House and during an eclipse in my 6th House. The nodes on the Taurus-Scorpio axis feel very sensitive to me as an entire transit, but this specific pair of eclipses are extremely close to the three personal planets that I have on that axis.

Being alone is comfortable. It’s easy, safe, protected, and free of any bullshit that any other person wants to put on me. However, no amount of solitude can save me from my own haunting thoughts.

I feel excavated by love. Broken up part and left in shambles, stitched back together, thread by thread. Left open and wounded and bleeding, yet somehow jagged puzzle pieces still fit in place. I’m reminded of all that I’ve lost that has fueled my heart space to open even more.

When they say that you haven’t lost until you really loved, it doesn’t quite hit until you’ve lost something or someone that made you feel like loving was a risk. The greatest gamble we enter, a wager against time and against ourselves.

On this trip I was crying and processing grief, and I described my dad as “the most beautifully benefic person I’d ever known.” Venus rejoicing in the Libra 5th House, copresent his chart ruler Mercury and the Moon. Jupiter in the Pisces 10th House. He was radiant.

He could make anyone laugh, always had a smile on his face, and did anything that he could to make me happy. It’s no surprise that feeling benefic things like joy and ease is a lot more difficult without his presence to transmute them. He was an umbrella above that made sure only the best rained down. Since his death, I’ve been grappling with the sieve that he held over my soul, filtering out the worst bits.

I’m writing on the open road. Voice to text, stream of consciousness, as my headlights are the only thing illuminating the pitch blackness in front of me. I just spent the eclipse alone, and although it was a solo road trip, at many times not so solo. Surrounded by people and still alone while I was being eclipsed.

I’ve always fancied myself as being good alone, when I know that’s not really the case. My sweet little 7th House planets long for connection: reciprocal and organic. My entire body hums when exchanging energy with others intimately. It’s still possible to be alone in a sea of people. To feel so misunderstood and misaligned that every persons aura feels like an affront to your existence.

My headlights cut through fog. My truth cuts through illusions. I have sold myself to be comfortable when I could’ve been vulnerable.

What is the real price you pay when you sell yourself a bad bag of goods? How much does it cost in time, money, and energy to sort through what’s rotten and find a fresh basket of honesty?

My jaw unclenches. My tongue presses into the roof of my mouth. My eyes burn, white hot tears fall from them.

I cross state lines in the comfort of darkness. Most of my trip has been crossing state lines in sunshine, welcomed by beautiful, breezy clouds, birds flying over me as I transition. Despite being more comfortable driving during the day, my body is more comfortable existing at night.

Shadows, crevices, depths, places you must bring a candle or lantern to traverse. Places where your eyes must adjust to the light or lack there of. Places where you’re not sure what you’ll find, but you’re very sure that you’ll find something worth finding.

When we gamble, we don’t know the outcome before hand. You might get a vision or a premonition, if you’re lucky, but there is still some sense of engaging with the great unknown. We dive in to the great unknown when we exit the womb, fated to experience the love we allow ourselves to feel.

I was born from love and fury, a great kaleidoscope of passion and rage. A question mark and exclamation point following a flirty phrase. A wink. A voice raised. An echo of disagreement rebounding through the walls.

For so long, I imagined love as a prize. A reward for being good. Good manners, good grades, being good enough. somehow I forgot that love wasn’t something you had to fight to earn or deserve. That simply existing made Love, your birthright. That being lovable meant just being yourself.

I begin to pass headlights as other humans and vehicles join me on the road. Darkness is less dense; a soft blur of bright white, yellows, and reds.

When we gamble, we place a bet. We can gain nothing besides perspective, and perspective is much more than nothing.

More than anything, when we gamble, we place a bet on ourselves. We commit to the great unknown. We thrust ourselves into the sea of question marks and exclamation points, somewhere between drowning and floating, as we search for air and rest on the surface.

We aren’t betting on anyone else’s ability to love us. We are betting on our ability to be loved, to allow people to love us, to receive love from others.

The gamble is not how long a love from an outside source will last. The gamble is how long it takes for us to replenish that love from within.

Being good alone doesn’t replace the goodness of being with others. Mistaking survival tactics for natural urges will only lead to living life like you’re under constant attack.

It’s exhausting to constantly be on the defense. It’s depleting to fight against yourself.

Are you pushing against pleasure? Is love a fight? Are you fighting for love? Are you fighting against love? Since when is love a fight? Since when did softness become a state of being that we are only allowed to achieve once we have gone through hardness? Since when did hardship become the measuring stick for our ability to give and receive love?

Maybe this is where I say that the eclipses on the Taurus-Scorpio axis are humbling me, enlivening me, shaking my soul’s foundation to its core. Maybe this is where I say that these eclipses are doing that to everyone on a cellular level, whether their consciousness has accepted that yet or not.

Maybe this is where I say that these eclipses want us to get fucking real about why we’re not letting love in to its full capacity.

Maybe this is where I say that pain is not a benchmark for success.

Wounds from love can be gnarly. They can be some of the most difficult to heal, often because they fester for so long before we truly see them. And undetected virus. A quickly growing tumor.

These wounds are more of a cut that has been bandaged and ignored rather than a scar that never softens. Softening is inevitable, but only with care.

Love is the wound and the medicine.

We were made to love. We were made to heal. We were made with every single ounce of power and passion and potential and potency that we need.

We were made for loving to be an avenue of healing. We were made for healing to be an avenue of loving. There’s far less separation between the two than one might think.

Dawn begins to break. New light emerges over the horizon. Edges of dark start to fade. The freshly eclipsed Moon, now waning and shrinking, smiles at me through a rear view mirror before being swallowed by treetops. The light in front of me rapidly changes colors and gains vibrancy, while the darkness behind me grows dim.

The day and the night continue their cyclical dance. There’s far less separation between the two than one might think.