So I often say out loud various beliefs I hold about myself. Things like: ‘I am the most sceptical person in the world’. ‘I only believe in evidence-based medicine’. ‘I wish I could be more supersticious’.
And yet, I have a confession to make.
Whenever I am interested in someone, I always check our star sign relationship compatibility.
Around ten years ago I ‘kind of’ dated a man as sceptical as me, a much older university professor. He was an atheist, a workaholic, a man of science, and a father of one.
However, the only two things that I learned from him during the time we were ‘kind of’ dating were:
- I am not really a Capricorn but a Sagittarius according to his assessment (I was born on 24th December so I was on the edge, he lectured me)
- I should only date Geminis (yes, he was one of them).
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As far as I know, I have never dated one (apart from him but it is negligible). I have some friends who are Geminis though, and in my head sometimes I think about that – I wonder if we have some special chemistry or am I just making all of this in my head.
I just wanted to say now that I am embarrassed that I even entertain these thoughts and I am almost certain that I don’t believe in all of that nonsense. Not for real.
But, a gun to my head, if I really had to swear that I don’t find this concept a little bit appealing…
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I finally watched the movie titled ‘The Love Witch’, a romance film stylized to look like a camp femme fatale story from the seventies.
Elaine is a witch and an artist, so we have a lot in common. She likes brewing potions, so she’s basically a pharmacist. We both enjoy beautiful clothes and make-up. We also both yearn for a great romance, although she is way more honest about this than me.
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Elaine believes she found the perfect love formula: “All a man wants is ‘just a pretty woman to love and to take care of them and to make them feel like a man and to give them total freedom on whatever they want to be or do.”
She wanders through the world, using her beauty and charm as well as actual magical charms on men she thinks she desires. Whenever a man becomes too obsessed with her, she loses her interest, calls him clingy and leads him to despair and death.
In the past, she was ridiculed and abused by men, deserted and judged. She didn’t feel like she deserved to be loved.
For me this movie was therapeutic.
Elaine in this movie said out loud things that I would never want to admit to myself. Things that, unfortunately, I might have felt in the past.
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Have you ever heard of this psychological exercise, probably based on reversed psychology: if you are struggling with some intrusive disempowering thoughts, you should write them down for yourself, in an exaggerated and explicit way, and then digest them.
The classic example is waiting for a text from that person. If it consumes and weakens you, you should write down something along the lines: ‘I am giving this person the power over my happiness. They owe me. Here and now, by my admission, I am this guy’s (whomst I hardly know by the way) bitch’.
Probably burn that piece of paper after you’re done, you don’t want anyone ever to witness that mess.
It might help and relieve some tension (still, waiting for someone to text you is a misery I don’t wish upon my worst enemy; ok, maybe upon 2-3 people tops).
Elaine’s golden lines are those intrusive exaggerated thoughts for me.
So to quote Elaine and make a lot of independent women painfully cringe:
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Basically existing to become the feminine ideal. Always thinking of how you present yourself and considering your own desirability. Being not for yourself, but to provide value to someone’s life. Seeing yourself only in someone’s eyes.
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I struggle with this. I remember a conversation that I had with one person a few months ago, about finding a significant other. This person told me that the way they saw it was that we were all alone in the world. Maybe someone will come along as a company, but they didn’t seem to value this prospect very highly. At the end of the day, you are by yourself, I was told. I was then fresh after my break up so I found some weird comfort in those words.
A couple of months passed and this person is now in a serious relationship, so in general, when someone tells me from now on that they don’t care about being in love, and that they are above the whole idea, I will call it bs.
I heard from someone else, just a few days ago, that my blog makes me look jaded by love. That maybe falling in love is an illusion but it doesn’t mean that you can’t have a relationship with someone, even a loving one.
It was said to me at a party, where I was hardly standing straight due to tiredness and low blood sugar level, my default state. I didn’t find a good answer, other than that I am jaded a little indeed, it’s hard not to be sometimes.
But the truth is that I don’t want to be jaded and cynical, pretending that being off alone in the world is the zen-stoic situation I have accepted in my enlightenment.
I don’t want to be like Elaine either.
I will never believe in soulmates or twin flames. The idea of having a telepathic indestructible connection with one special person in this world scares me tremendously and I don’t know why people would ever romanticize that. I don’t want to be addicted to anything or anyone.
But illusions and charms are what makes people do incredibly stupid things and they might be both terrible and beautiful. Driven only by logic, you would stay always in your place and follow all the rules.
I want to dare to assume that I am a bit of a witch, not desperately wanting to be loved, but loving the magic of possibilities. It is being delusional in the best way possible.
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Sandra Cisneros
You Called Me Corazón
That was enough
for me to forgive you.
To spirit a tiger
from its cell.
Called me corazón
in that instant before
I let go the phone
back to its cradle.
Your voice small.
Heat of your eyes,
how I would’ve placed
my mouth on each.
Said corazón
and the word blazed
like a branch of jacaranda.
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“I assign Zois the Eretrian, wife of Kabeira, to Earth and to Hermes — her food, her drink, her sleep, her laughter, her intercourse, her playing of the kithara, and her entrance, her pleasure, her little buttocks, her thinking, her eyes…”
A lead curse tablet from Boetia, Greece, written by someone who was jealously in love with a man called Kabeira and tried to damn his wife Zois
