Since writing that bit about college bar and the obese Pisces, I have been discussing various aspect of my past with the husband as they are just on my mind. It’s not his favorite subject because it provokes his emotion is ways he prefer not to endure and respecting that I tend to keep quiet but sometimes things just seem to need air. I just want them out where I can see and think about them so I was explaining over the weekend what it was like for me.
“I tell someone something and I have no idea what they make of it. I don’t know if they can understand it, if it means anything to them… what they think of it or what they think I think of it. The only thing I know is their perception will not match mine in any way, shape or form. It’s just not possible to find someone who would know what I was talking about and see things anywhere near the way I do because the experience is too unique.”
He was listening.
“Well you know what I am talking about. You can’t run around talking to people about your experience in Special Forces because they aren’t going to have any idea what you’re talking about and this is assuming you’re believed in the first place which would be unusual right there. So if you do tell someone something, who knows what they think? They think things based on their own experience and their experience has nothing in common with yours.”
“Well that’s true.”
“The difference between me and you is you had a fairly… a somewhat normal family and upbringing so you can at least guess how people see things but their experience is far more remote from mine. People are downright mysterious to me. I am just at an incredible loss trying to imagine their perspective because I’ve got no basis of normal at all. I was young,” I said. “I was born into this it, is all I know.”
“Yeah, I did have a strong basis I also had my experience by choice. I decided what I was going to do with my life.”
“That’s true but choice is irrelevant to the point I am trying to make. I don’t care if I had a choice. I am saying it is virtually impossible for me to explain something and have it be relatable and I mean anything at all. It’s like there be an expectation I turn on the TV. Why would someone like me turn the TV on?” I asked. “Why? And how am I going to explain this to someone who has always had TV as part of their life? Well you have TV now, Elsa, turn it on!” I laughed. “Well, yeah I see the TV there but it does not interest me. That’s a simple statement of fact but no one can understand it. They think I think they should not watch TV either. They think I am saying I am superior or something which is the last thing I’d think in a million years. It’s not something that would cross my mind yet that statement would be parsed that way by most everyone just because. Just because it is the normal thought to have, I guess, But I don’t understand why. Why is that the normal thought? Hell if I know. How would I know? I did not grow up normal… I had not one day’s exposure to normal until I was a teenager and by them, lemme tell you, it’s too late. By that age, you’re already formed. There is just no way to rewind and start over, the die has been cast.”
Now check this. My ex perennial boyfriend/friend Scott also has a very unusual childhood. He was a prodigy on the piano and consequently he was kept indoors to practice playing all day and all night from the time he about 4 or 5.
I drug him to Mexico once, he was about 27 years old and this is when he found out the ocean was salty. Sorry if you think that’s stupid… the man has genius IQ. He just didn’t get out much see?
So when you meet people like us you have to suspend your judgment because we just don’t know what you know. We don’t have common knowledge. We more than make up for it with our uncommon knowledge if you allow it but you’d be surprised how few do.
If you want a marker in a chart for “unusual experience”, I would give it to Jupiter and Uranus in aspect. One way or the other, you are just going to have an “out there” perspective and that’s all there is to it. Scott and I have that, where the soldier has Jupiter / Pluto which very different.
The other day, satori said she thought her “imprint” was Mork of Mork and Mindy. I hate to tell her but she actually may have found him in me. 😉
Is your life experience relatively usual or relatively not? What’s the Jupiter situation in your chart?
Jupiter in Virgo square Uranus in Gemini. (Both ruled by Mercury.)
Most of my childhood, I felt alienated, mystified, hurt.
In my middle teens, I came across a couplet, roughly translated it reads:
If you need to understand yourself, observe others.
If you want to understand others, look into your own heart.
This was my personal salvation. I worked hard at it and it worked for me. Instead of continually stumbling across differences, I concentrated on similarities for quite a while.
This is the foundation. We all want food, shelter and someone to love. It’s a commonality. You can build from it and even entrust your strangeness to a select few once you know each other.
But I was still repeatedly told, you’re the STRANGEST person I’ve ever met … this was never meant in a good way.
This aspect can be useful: it weeds out nasty insecure people whom I’d rather not have in my life anyway.
I rejoice in your uniqueness, Elsa. I love getting your emails and often spend half the day on your website. Whatever you talk about, it seems to me that there’s a RIGHTNESS about it.
… first of all I think you are not a conventional person and past experiences certainly had an impact. but I imagine you remained that way: unconventional and perhaps it led you to have a genuine interest in knowing the points of view of others by trying to understand the context. This will have given you different depths and facets on things, I imagine they are multiple for everything you encounter. if you are unique and know it, it is a precious thing like a diamond rather than just a raw carbon stone. you are providing an astrological cue to verify: Jupiter / Uranus.. Jupiter is also one of those who proposes an order, perhaps he knows more than one. Uranus the nonconformist. What you say resonates with me, I don’t know if it only has to do with Uranus in the fourth house and Jupiter, ruler of my fifth, in the eleventh house. I can say that I feel that even the most criticized non-conformists are precious. It can be really hard to make yourself known and accepted for who you are in a world where adaptation is structured according to rigid standards. I think a note is not necessary, but you never know how it will be received: I only mean those who, with their way, being or ideas, do no harm and have no intention of doing so. Thank you for being there for everyone in these years so ruthlessly revolutionary for consciences and thanks to those who give ideas to orient ourselves… to search for meaning and being more authentic, it is a special journey.
“I can say that I feel that even the most criticized non-conformists are precious.”
Oh man, do I ever agree. We can’t find this anymore. It’s virtually impossible. People have been driven crazy, or deep underground, or they may simply be disgusted.
Elsa I keep wondering more and more if we were born around the same time. I have seemingly similar aspects, but don’t know enough astrology to know if it’s because of when we were born. We both have Mars conj Mercury. Not sure for you what yours is, but I have Uranus opp Jupiter. I’m sure on some level we share many similarities. Somehow. I just know we share some of our whatever you want to call it…unique- ness, alternate perspective?
Thanks for opening space fore me to be ok with what is.
I don’t have Jupiter opposing Uranus, so some things in common and others, not. 🙂
You’re welcome, in regards to the site!:)
Sagittarius rising, Uranus and Jupiter in Sag conjunct to Asc from 12th and 9th house virgo sun. I studies astrology back in college. Later, I got a scholarship to go to grad school in the US, moved across the ocean, alwayw felt bi, married to a woman, finished PhD, got a divorce and came out as gay. I work as a researcher interviewing people in the medical field.
Welcome, Zak.
Since I first interacted on this page, I’ve come across several comments about a feeling of alienation being tied to autism (the aspergery type). So I looked for that kind of comment and found LOTS of them. And I realized that these comments had actually been there all the time. And either I hadn’t noticed them before, or they had sneaked in and materialised right under my nose – you know, like a fade-in on a movie screen (if I take my eyes off them for a SECOND, they’ll disappear again, I just know it…).
AWK! The quicksand is back, sucking at my ankles again…