I had tarot cards when I was a teenager. I bought them somewhere ordinary back in Saskatoon. At Midtown Plaza? Maybe at Coles? Took them home, read the booklet, but I don't remember ever actually using them.
Lately, something impelled me to get a new set, and I picked up a small Rider-Waite deck. I've been working on a really personal and probably unpublishable writing project, one that interrogates a particular era of my life. Due to Reasons, I don't always have a complete memory of things. There's someone who can help, but it's a deep wound. We talked around it vaguely, once, a few years ago when I came back to visit. How to approach this was a reason I started going to therapy. I know it will be a necessary part of my healing. But I'm not ready to ask. Not yet.
Yesterday I sat down and decided to do my first reading. I focused and asked: what did those years — all of them — mean to me? Is there a path to the whole truth now? And what will this become for me going forward?
My cards:
Then: Eight of Swords. In every way, in every possible definition, it was a test. But I'm here. I drew three cards. Fuck you. It didn't destroy me.
Now: Moon. The decades and the particular events have occluded the truth. Memory's uncertain. A little thin. So much of it still hidden. Up against this I can give myself over, give myself up. How far do I push? How much do I really want learn?
Forward: Ten of Swords. I will learn everything, and at its cost. And with this, it will finally be done. I get some closure. Only a little. The rest remains hard and knitted. Something like scar tissue.