Early & Alone #81: Feeling the Feelings
On dead mice, old wounds, and the Ides of March
I found a dead mouse on my living room floor this morning. It must have been poisoned—it was just laying there, intact, in the middle of my living room floor. My first instinct was to cover it with a bowl. This was both to discourage Gizmo from messing with it and to prevent me from having to look at it. Then I frantically Googled how to dispose of a dead mouse without touching it, and texted Jeff, pleading for advice. I then took a deep breath, put Gizmo in his crate, put on some rubber gloves (just in case) and VERY BRAVELY moved the bowl and swept the mouse corpse into a Triscuits box, put that in a bag, and took it out to the trash. Victory!
After I sprayed disinfectant all around the crime scene, I let Gizmo out of his crate. He proceeded to pee in the living room, managing to hit my favorite blanket in the process. So after I cleaned THAT up and put the blanket in the wash, I sat down with my now-lukewarm coffee and drew my daily tarot card.
The three of swords is not a great card! The main interpretations are pain, suffering, heartbreak, and grief. Heavy stuff. But as with every tarot card, you can go deeper. It’s not just a card that says “Damn, you’re screwed.” It’s a card that reminds us to feel our feelings, especially the painful ones. It’s an interesting card, too, because though the swords are stabbing the heart, there is no blood. This indicates that the wound is old. The swords are ingrained. They’re a part of the architecture. That’s how our psychic wounds are. They may never completely heal. Instead, we grow around them.
As I write this, it is the Ides of March. I remember learning about it in high school, the famous phrase “Beware the Ides of March,” reading Julius Caesar in 10th grade English, the ultimate betrayal by Brutus. Basically, for the Romans, the Ides meant the middle, and they happened each month. So for March, that’s March 15. And as anyone who’s lived in New England can tell you—March sucks. And we’re in the thick of it. Oh and don’t forget that this week marks the beginning of the Covid lockdown in the U.S.—three years. That’s not insignificant. Our bodies remember. Beware the ides of March indeed.
So, yeah, that Three of Swords sure seems like an apt card today. I struggle with the admonition to “feel your feelings.” Maybe it’s the Lexapro I take every morning for my anxiety. Maybe it’s avoidance. Maybe I’m just built this way. I don’t often feel big emotions, like rage or joy or excitement. I mean, I feel these things, but it’s more occasional, more small scale. Mostly it’s kind of like a quiet…not blankness, but a muted palette. Like the brown noise I play every night when I go to bed. Does that sound bad? I don’t know! I just live here.
The Three of Swords asks us to examine those painful feelings, those old wounds that we’ve learned to cover up with coping mechanisms and potentially destructive numbing behaviors (like covering up that dead mouse with a bowl). To “examine our own cause and effect” as Jessa Crispin writes in The Creative Tarot, and learn from it, process it, try to heal from it.
We all have these old wounds. The ones that we’ve grown around, have learned to mostly ignore, until something reminds us they’re there. Sometimes we get the reminders every hour, sometimes days, sometimes entire years. But it’s okay to remember they’re there. They’re a part of us. It’s not bad to feel shame or guilt or fear or rage or sadness when these reminders come up. If I’d just left the bowl on the mouse, things would have gotten real bad. (I’m sorry, I know this is so gross, believe me, but I love nothing more than an apt metaphor. [ooh that rhymed!]) Instead, I took a deep breath and dealt with it. And now I’m moving on. I could have gone back to bed (it was so tempting) but I’m using those feelings of overwhelm to write instead. Take your feelings and build something from them, however messy. It will help, I promise.
Bright Spots
🎞 The Oscars: Every year, I get excited for the Oscars, and every year I come away kind of bored and disappointed. But this year, I’d actually seen a good number of the nominated movies, so I was extra excited to watch. It was…fine. But there were good moments. Like Ke Huy Quan’s Best Supporting Actor win; Sarah Polley’s (Ramona Quimby!) win for Best Adapted Screenplay for Women Talking; the performance from RRR (which I haven’t seen but now want to for more of that dancing), and of course Michelle Yeoh’s win for Everything Everywhere All at Once.
🎤 Lucy Dacus “Night Shift” video—This song still gives me chills every time I listen to it, despite it being 5 years old at this point. And now it has a perfect music video.
That’s it for this week! Good luck out there.
Loved this one, Jill! It was like I was there with you, the mouse and Gizmo in his crate. And the tarot reading - perfect!