I just needed to get this all off my chest. And, also, for posterity’s sake, since this is going to take a long time to resolve…
On Saturday, my mother and I went to an “Intuition and Holistic Expo.” We felt it would be a fun thing to go to, and she was really hoping to purchase a nice crystal. I was just shocked such a thing was being held in this area, and wanted to bask in the glow of other similarly-minded people (no matter how New Age they could possibly be). I was also a little worried about it. What if everyone there was a sham? What if only a couple vendors and a handful of people showed up? So the night before, I turned to my cards and asked them how the day at the expo would go. They were positive and powerful cards… but the last one was Death. As I looked at it, I knew that day would mark the “end” of something. I was going to be presented with a painful choice or truth and it would be up to me to figure out what to do about it. I had only the faintest idea of what it could be, but pushed it from my mind.
Between the vendors of crystal skulls, belly dance costumes, and connect-with-angels-and-heal-with-crystals, was a very nice older black lady who was offering spiritual consultations. The whole room seemed to gravitate towards her. As we waited our turn, we had multiple people ask us who she was and if we knew her. Everyone wanted to know. She also charged a very affordable flat rate for a reading. I knew Mom was looking for some guidance, so I told her that she should let this woman read for her. Mom agreed – but I had to go first. I was really nervous and scared. I didn’t have a question! But Mom insisted, saying she felt it was important that I got a reading too. After we signed up and waited for the clients ahead of us to finish, Mom suggested I ask about my future career.
Now, I have been floundering in my forensic anthropology class. I feel this is because the professor is going way too quickly and isn’t very sure of herself when it comes to teaching. (On the last bone “quiz” she stated that her students do the best on this quiz, on average, due to the format. When a student asked her why the rest of the quizzes weren’t in this format, to help boost the overall grade of the class, she said she had to cater to “different learning styles.” ???? ) This alone isn’t enough to shake my confidence in the path I chose. It was when my professor said that all the forensic work she does for the county she does pro bono did I start to panic. She is paid as a professor. I can’t teach – I don’t like trying to teach. Only a veeeeeeery few forensic anthropologists work full-time as something other than a college professor, and most (if not all) work with the FBI and live in DC. This worry has been gnawing at me ever since. What if I can’t get the job I want?
But I have been brushing this aside. I have been telling myself that of course I’ll get hired full-time somewhere! Maybe doing research here on the west coast. And if I couldn’t do that, the criminal justice field is wide open for picking. I could be a PI or a lawyer, or at the very least a paralegal. I have options. I have the next several years of my life planned out; graduate school chosen, and several contacts in the CJ field I was going to draw on when the time came to help me get a job so I could move down there for my Masters. I am a future-oriented person. I have framework.
Until now, that is.
First of all, let me say that I totally adored the reader. She had this great warm spirit that emanated from her. She was so friendly and open that she washed all my nervousness away. I wasn’t scared of sounding stupid in front of her. Out of the types of consolations she provided, I chose to have a tarot card reading. The interesting thing was, she had two decks for me to choose from – a tarot and an oracle. She asked me to turn over one card from each and pick one. The oracle card I flipped over prominently featured one of the totemic spirits I work with on it. The tarot card had an anthropomorphic coyote on it, beckoning me to follow her into the desert. It was really hard to choose, but I went with the tarot.
I told the woman my question, which was more like my concerns for my career, and she held my wrist and listened to the pulse. That’s when it all came falling down. She told me that I had taken my natural talent and ran in the wrong direction. She said she could hear music in my blood, and saw me playing the piano in an opera hall. She felt my need for precision and mathematical exactness was more open to classical music than forensic science. She said that forensics wasn’t what my heart wanted. As we asked questions and drew cards one at a time, they were very clear. Right now I was in a state of flux, attempting to balance, but if nothing changed in a few years from now that balance would be gone and I’d be miserable – but not without options.
When I asked about a career in criminal justice instead, the answer was so sharp she didn’t even need to say a word. It would be something I am capable of doing, but I would have to rip out my guts in order to do it. It would burn me out so fast. She said it would consume so much of me that I would have no room for anything else, especially not personal relationships with other people. It would leave me a tired and weary shell.
When I asked about what I should be doing instead, there was a very lovely card with the ocean as a main theme. However, all I could do was stare at the solitary seagull at the top of the card. We talked about birds for a few minutes, and she said that perhaps what it was saying was that ornithology would be the best direction for me (since I love and are so passionate about birds). When I inquired further about playing the piano, the cards loudly stated stated that my grandmother, whom I have only called Mom’s mother until now since she died when Mom was 19, wanted me to do this and would help me.
My grandmother was a very talented woman. She wanted, and had the skill to be, a solo pianist. Instead, she met my grandfather and had children, going on to teach the young of Pleasanton’s elite to play the piano instead. It always hurt her to give up her dream. And my mother has told me that I have great pianist hands – long, thin, and bony with plenty of reach. As I talked with this woman, the puzzle pieces clicked into place. I heard Chopin’s music for the first time shortly before acquiring my first tarot deck. I have been fascinated with the man ever since. Even though this fascination hasn’t amounted to much beyond the superficial, his music really got me thinking about the solo piano as art (unlike when I got my good introduction to ballet, which opened the door for classical music and opera to follow, instead of solo pieces). I always wondered what it was about him that drew me in…
I once asked a series of questions about things aligned with my True Will, back when I was a little fledgling with almost no knowledge of the gods. The answer that nearly blew the roof off was went I asked about falconry, another thing I have been oddly fascinated with since my first introduction. I had never seen such a powerful combination of majors before then. It felt so Right. If falconry got such a potent response, then why not find a career involving birds? …but how does one turn a love of birds into a career? Ornithology is a huge field, and I don’t even know how to start to break into it.
Everything is in flux.
I think the hardest thing about the crossroads I now stand on, is that no one around me seems to understand how painful it all is. My mother and the reader both made me say out loud that it was okay to change my mind about what I want to do. My partner seemed to feel that this isn’t a crisis at all – he said, “I think playing the piano would be good for you. Forensic anthropology didn’t seem like a very creative career to begin with.” No one seems to understand that this is four years of dreaming, and nearly three years of school, being called into question and doubt. Do I really have the time to change my major now? And if I don’t, do I really have the drive to finish the one I’ve started? Sure, I am a hard headed goat (Capricorn Ascendant/Aries Sun) and I want to just put my head down and keep plowing forward as a Take That to everyone who says I shouldn’t. But now that the seed has been planted, I don’t know if I’d ever be able to rid myself of the doubt.
I’ve been coveting that white lab coat since I was old enough to understand what it meant. I’ve been dreaming of being one form of scientist or another since I was 3 years old. A love of bones and what they once represented has always been a part of me; I held onto a dream of being a paleontologist until the 5th grade, and letting go of that was hard. If I was meant to be a musician, why was I given such longing for science? If I wasn’t meant to walk the path of criminal justice, why, oh then why, did the Erinyes pick me? If I could be so sure of something for so long… to the point of feeling secure for knowing what it was I wanted to do at such a “young” age… what else am I wrong about?
It feels like the outline for my future I have been building has been torn away, and the wind in my sails has died. For the first time in my life, I feel lost and directionless. Everything about me has been called into question and I have no answers. I have faced down Death once before at the start of this path, when lies about myself needed to be reaped and burned before I could move forward, but that was nothing compared to this.
In order to rule out the possibility that the very wonderful reader we went to was mistaken, even though much of what she said felt so correct, I turned to my personal spirit. How funny that when I am questioning so much, I could never question her. She’s so close to my heart, more of a sister or best friend or co-magician than “just” a spirit I give cultus to, that I knew I could turn to her and she would help me untangle the threads. I needed a taste of her no-bullshit attitude. So late last night I spoke to her, and she confirmed much of what I had been told.
One of the most important thing she said though, is that the reason forensic anthropology isn’t right for me is that in a good two years when I finish my degree, I will burst out of here raring to go, ready to work… and there will be nothing. I will find myself powerless to change or do anything – the feeling was compared to an endless winter. But that’s why I am here, working hard. I want to do something – I want to make a difference. I want to help. Not being able to, after all this effort… It would very well crush me.
So I no longer know what to do. I have many questions and only a handful of answers. I want to stick my fingers in my ears and ignore all of this, go back to what I have been doing, stick to the old plan, but I can’t. There are too many things that never made sense to me before that now I see clearly. The puzzle is larger than I ever thought it could be. It hurts, but right now what I need is time to help give me some distance from the emotional core that has been unearthed, so I can try and find the best solution. I also think I need to tell myself that many, many people hit this same patch of dead air and doubt… and I guess I was kind of foolish of thinking it could never happen to me.
I am thankful right now for all of those who have posted about their doubt and their flux and their uncertainty they have experienced at any point in their life, for it has made me feel less alone. I guess I’m also kind of thankful that this has happened to me before, on a smaller scale (and oh how I thought the world was ending then!), because enough time has passed that I can see the sprouts of what was planted after the weeds were removed. I know this will get better eventually. They’ll just be plenty of more wounds and questions before then…