Welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Lanyadoo. I'm an astrologer, psychic medium, and animal communicator, and I'm going to give you your weekly horoscope and no-bullshit mystical advice for living your very best life.

Jessica:            Tracy, welcome to the podcast. What would you like a reading about?

Tracy:              Hi, Jessica. So my question was very short and sweet. It was just, "How do I get over my ex?"

Jessica:            That is the shortest question I've ever attempted to answer in my life. So, before we begin, you were born November 7, 1995, in Murray, Utah, at 8:08 a.m.

Tracy:              Yes.

Jessica:            Excellent. So okay. Say a little more. Say a little more. How long ago were you and your ex together?

Tracy:              Oh gosh. Okay. This is the embarrassing—but let's go. So I will preface this with I feel like I have a hard time getting over exes in general, and my first real boyfriend relationship—that was, like, four years long. And to this day, I still sometimes think, "What if? What if things could work out? What"—you know, all this. But the one that is a mention to this question—we met about two, three years ago, and we met through a guy who I was dating at the time who was not good. Yeah. It's very messy.

                        And so I met him, and he acted very much like, "Oh, we're just cool. We're friends. Whatever." The second I was out of that relationship, he was into me. And then I was like, "Okay, sure. Let's go on this ride now." And we did, and that was about a year of situationship, I'll call it, followed by about a year of me having him blocked and missing him every day and crying and grieving and dating other people and missing him. And then, this year, he came back into my life, and it's been a mess ever since.

                        And I just have such an attachment. I have such a heavy attachment to him, and I feel like he does to me, too. But they're totally unhealthy attachments, and I feel like he brings nothing but chaos to my life. But I'm still just like—I have a gazillion feelings about it.

Jessica:            So are you still dating him?

Tracy:              No.

Jessica:            Okay. So, right now, you're off, but it's off in a cycle of off and on?

Tracy:              It's a cycle of off and on that I would love to keep off.

Jessica:            Okay. How long have you guys been off?

Tracy:              Well, this whole year, we've not really officially been on, but kinda. And I only blocked him days ago.

Jessica:            Okay. So, a couple days ago, you blocked him.

Tracy:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Were you having sex with him before that? Were you flirting with him before that? What was the vibe before last week?

Tracy:              Yeah. The vibe of that was he says, "Oh, I really don't want to date you," but we're hooking up. We're having sex. He's coming over to my house. We're doing ceramics. We're going out to dinner, maybe [crosstalk]—

Jessica:            Okay. So you're dating. You're not calling it dating, but you're dating.

Tracy:              Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Okay. And then, very briefly—you don't have to give me all the details of the world, but very briefly, what makes it so toxic? Is it just that he's clearly dating you and saying, "I don't want to date you"?

Tracy:              Yes.

Jessica:            Okay.

Tracy:              Yeah. Exactly. He tells me, like, "Oh, I know it must be so hard dating a musician." And basically, he doesn't have a job. He doesn't seem to want to have a job. It's not all about money, but it's like he doesn't ever have money or a plan to make any for himself. And I feel like he is very quick to accept me giving him things. I feel like when we were together, he basically moved himself into my house because it was more convenient for him, not because he [crosstalk].

Jessica:            So where does he live?

Tracy:              He lives by himself, but where we live, there's—I live in the city, and he lives in the suburbs.

Jessica:            And so he must have money to pay rent.

Tracy:              Oh, he gets money from his family. He has a family business and stocks is what he says.

Jessica:            So he's, like—family has money, and so he lives off of his parents.

Tracy:              Yes. But his parents live in a different state, and he's here alone. And I think that they kind of view him as, like—I don't know, like the artist son or something. It's like they support him, but they always know that he's causing problems.

Jessica:            Okay. So there's a lot that I want to say straight out the gate. So the first thing I'll say is you have a stellium in Scorpio. You've got your Mercury and Sun in the twelfth house in Scorpio. You've got a Scorpio Rising with Pluto really closely conjoined it. You are the youngest millennial. Do you identify as millennial or as Gen Z?

Tracy:              Millennial [crosstalk]. Yeah.

Jessica:            Millennial. Yeah, but barely. Agreed. Your Pluto is at 29 degrees Scorpio and 52 minutes. You would be the youngest millennial, or maybe one day, they'll come up with a name for something between Gen Z and millennial, and you would be it. Okay. That said, letting go of people—not your forte. Not your forte. You don't like to let go. You don't like endings, and that is really hard for you. And the fact that it's really hard for you has literally nothing, zero percent, to do with whether or not that person is good for you or even if you genuinely love them. It has to do with how hard it is for you to let go.

                        Now, because you've got your Ascendant conjunct Pluto conjunct Venus out of sign, you have this unfortunate belief that the more it hurts—the more chaotic and dramatic and unpleasant it is—the closer to love it is. And so, if you, let's say, catch feelings for somebody and they're healthy and well adjusted and respectful and you just get along, there's a part of you that's like, "Well, this isn't anything. This doesn't count."

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Real talk. Until you develop greater clarity inside of yourself and a willingness to experience love not as a building on fire, but instead, a warm fire in a controlled place like a fireplace, until you make internal adjustments, you are likely to perpetuate the cycle with this guy or someone else.

Tracy:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And that is a really important thing for me to say, partially because from my perspective as an astrologer, it seems true, but also because none of this has to do with this guy. We'll call him Joe. This has nothing to do with Joe. This has nothing to do with him at all. We can talk about him, but this pattern that you have of holding on to something that kind of burns you is your pattern that existed before Joe and, if you're not careful, will exist after him.

Tracy:              Yeah. I completely hear you and agree.

Jessica:            Yeah. So let's talk about the concept of getting over someone. So, when you say you want to get over him, I'm assuming what you mean by that is you want to stop having feelings for him. Is that correct?

Tracy:              Yeah, because I feel like I'm fixated, and he's in my thoughts all the time, and I don't want to have feelings for him because I feel like he's fixated—like, I'm fixated on him all the time. And I'm fixated on the good times we had, and I'm fixated on some things that he maybe said about a life we could have had. And it's like I can't get over that, and then I want to go back, and then I think of myself as being less than. I think of myself as, you know—I compare the two of us, which is bizarre, but it's what I start to do. And I don't want that. I just want to be separate, separate beings.

Jessica:            So those are a lot of things. So let's unpack them as separate things. One thing that I do want to kind of name for you is that breaking up with somebody or letting them go actually doesn't always include not having thoughts and feelings of them. It's developing a different relationship to the thoughts and feelings.

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            That's one thing I want to say, is magically snapping your fingers so you don't have thoughts and feelings about him—that's a bad goal. That's a really bad goal because it's unlikely to happen instantly. If it was likely to happen instantly, we wouldn't be having this conversation, and you wouldn't be spending years on this guy, right?

Tracy:              Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. So, because your nature is to ruminate—like you ruminate on your favorite song, and you listen to it over and over and over again, yeah?

Tracy:              Yeah. Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. You have a favorite pair of shoes, and you wear them until there's holes in them, I'm guessing.

Tracy:              Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. So you are a ruminator. And you're like, "This felt good once. Something magical happened while I was wearing this hat once, and now it's my fucking magic hat."

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. That means that this rumination that you catch yourself doing, obsessing on a potential future or obsessing on good things in the past—they're not personal to him. You do this with shoes and songs. This is you. This is not him.

Tracy:              Yes.

Jessica:            And so I think it's really important to recognize, when something is an anomaly in your nature, well, then we want to treat it really different than when something is a consistent part of your nature. And for you, obsession and rumination, fixation, attachment—these things are just kind of like—a rainy day in Portland is what I call it. Have you ever heard me use that expression before?

Tracy:              Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So you know what I'm talking about. It's just a rainy day in Portland for you. So what I want to ground you into is, when you start fixating on the future or the past or what he said or what he did or what you could have been, whether it's thinking he's amazing and you're terrible, whether it's thinking about the great times you had or the great times you might have if only you tried again—all of those thoughts and feelings—and unfortunately, at this stage of the game, it's 100 percent of them. Now, if we were talking about this a year ago, maybe I'd be like, "Well, let's see." But no. This has been going on so long, I'm going to make a bold statement and say 100 percent of these thoughts and feelings are your rainy day in Portland.

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So, if you start to label it in that way, then it becomes a problem that you have with your own mind and heart instead of a problem you have with this guy. Listen. I would have a very easy time sitting here and telling you about all of the things that are wrong with him. It would be too easy. I don't even know. It would be so easy.

Tracy:              I'm like, can we hear one?

Jessica:            Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. Will you do me a favor? Say his full name out loud.

Tracy:              Yeah. [redacted].

Jessica:            Oh my God. The thing that stands out the most when I look at him energetically is something that you kind of already spoke to, which is he has no intention of trying in any way at all, unless it serves him and he wants to. Right?

Tracy:              Yeah. Yes.

Jessica:            It's not just with you. It's not just with developing a career path or making any kind of money. It's with literally everything. He is completely entitled, completely self-indulgent, and even though he's got sad puppy eyes and he's got a tender soul—

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            —he is a useless adult.

Tracy:              Okay. I'm like—I'm over him.

Jessica:            Okay. Well, for this moment. For this moment, right?

Tracy:              For this moment. Yes.

Jessica:            For this moment, because I'm speaking to the thing that is, at core, the problem that you have with this person.

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            It's, at core, the problem that every person he is friends with or dates always has problems with because he can really choose to be there for you—you could be having a hard day, and he could say all the right things and hold you and be amazing if he's in the mood.

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            But if he's not in the mood, he is awful. He is dismissive, disrespectful, and unkind.

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And for some reason, you have a hard time accepting that this is who he is. You think this is who he is because of you; this is who he is towards you, at you, in reaction to you. And that's when low self-esteem shit comes up.

Tracy:              Yes.

Jessica:            If you were to accept that this is who this guy is, period—like, period—then it would be much easier for you to accept that you could turn yourself into a pretzel—you could turn yourself into a self-cleaning oven, right? You could take care of everything, and he would still be disrespectful, uncaring, and just a fucking pain in the ass to be around when he's in the mood.

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Now, you know I don't like to focus—I don't want to encourage anyone to overfocus on their nodes in astrology when they're young. I just don't think it's a useful thing to focus on in general. That said, your North Node is in Libra. And what this means is that in this lifetime, your soul has come here to figure out how to be in authentic, reciprocal relationships. And here's what you're doing and what I think you've been doing your whole life so far. What you're doing is you're getting into relationships with people who, the second you meet them, you're like, "I know how you're going to fuck me over. I know how you're going to hurt my feelings. I see exactly what's wrong with you." And your survival mechanisms say, "Well, I'm safer because I see what's wrong with this person. I see what's wrong with this situation."

                        And so you get into it, and you never get to be fully seen. You never get to have a truly reciprocal, intimate relationship. What you have is intensity, which mimics intimacy, but it burns you out, and it doesn't allow you to truly show up as yourself because it's not safe.

Tracy:              Yeah. Yeah, that totally checks out.

Jessica:            Yeah. So here's the fucking hammer, unfortunately for you, which is, in your lived experience, you're telling yourself, "I'm obsessing on this guy, and I keep on going back to this guy and all these things." But what's actually happening is you're making a choice to trade out intensity for intimacy because intimacy is—as hard as intensity is, as painful as all these experiences are, it's like it's the devil you know, whereas intimacy, true intimacy with somebody who's truly there for you and safe—it requires that you own your own intensity, that you own your own passion. And that's actually much scarier to you.

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. In your birth chart, you have a Mars/Jupiter conjunction in Sagittarius intercepted in the first house. And shorthand in English, what that means is that impulse control is not your forte.

Tracy:              No.

Jessica:            It's not. And you've got a weird set of feelings and beliefs around that. And so what you do as a way to—like, your unconscious strategy to work around it—so you pick people to date and to be really close to who—they themselves have impulse control issues that are bigger or louder than yours. Is this tracking?

Tracy:              Yeah. Tracking.

Jessica:            Yeah. So it's not your fault that your relationship is burning everything in its path. It's their fault.

Tracy:              Yeah. Yeah. That checks out because I feel like I do this with men specifically, but when I've dated women, I feel like I find better partnership, but then I'm bouncing three months in, like, "Oh, you want to be my girlfriend? I have to go. Bye."

Jessica:            Okay. So you basically just confirmed everything I've already said to this point, right?

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            When there's actual intimacy, you are forced to deal with your own compulsions, your own self-destructive impulses, and your terror—and I'm going to use that word, "terror"—of truly being seen and having to be accountable to that. And for you, the way your bisexuality is working out, it plays out with men, right?

Tracy:              Uh-huh.

Jessica:            Men allow you to not have to own any of your shit, and you never have to be truly seen.

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Women—they see you. You don't act out. You don't burn the house down kind of thing. But then you have to deal with your own impulses and the impulse to burn the house down. And so the way it sounds like, so far, you've handled that is by not getting into actual relationships with women—

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            —but only doing that with men. So I don't know. Does that actually make you super fucking Gay and you're just wasting your time with men? Maybe, or maybe it's not about gender; you're just kind of experiencing this through boys versus girls. I don't know. But you could see why I would ask the question, right?

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            I'm not speaking, per se, to date women, date men, date Nonbinary—whatever gender. I don't care. But what I am saying is if what happens is you are able to choose people who are healthy for you when you're dating women, that's really good information for you to have about yourself. And I want to encourage you to choose people who you have to be true to yourself around as a way to be true to them.

                        The pattern you're playing out with men at this time—and I say at this time, so far in your adult life—is you choose people who have more intense impulse control issues than you, that are in some way actively—have the personality, the nature, or the behaviors of someone who's not there, who you can't rely on. Does that track?

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. And then it sounds like, when you date women, for whatever weird reason, you choose people who—when they say they're going to be there, they're there, who actually are interested in getting to know you, who have better handle on their impulses. It is possible that's because you're working something out with guys that doesn't have anything to do with intimacy. It is also possible that it's just easier for you to do your self-destructive shit with guys.

                        To me, it's not—I'm not saying, "Therefore, date women," although, again, it sounds super Gay if you're choosing healthy with women and unhealthy with men, okay? I mean—okay. But that could just be a coincidence. It's not necessarily Gay, but, you know, again, it sounds a little Gay. Okay. So—

Tracy:              Well, I was just—something funny is one time, I wrote you a question, and all my little short questions—this one's like, "Am I actually Gay?"

Jessica:            Yeah. I mean, that's a fair question. It's a pretty fair question. When it comes to sexuality, first of all, for some people, it's a fixed point. Some people are just Gay, Gay, Gay. Some people are straight, straight, straight. Some people are something else. And that's just that fixed point. Okay. Fine. But for a lot of people, it's like this thing that kind of ebbs and flows and moves around. Some people are asexual for periods of their life and pretty sexual or romantic or aromantic in different periods.

                        Your sexuality may be that you like fucking with dudes; you like having sex with dudes. But that doesn't necessarily mean that love and intimacy is what you have with men, because what you're showing me—both what you're telling me and also what I'm seeing when I look at you energetically is the intimacy that you've experienced with men is, like, calamitous—

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            —which is not real intimacy. It's trauma bonding.

Tracy:              Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. It, in a way, doesn't really matter if that's a symptom of you actually—you know, maybe women are a better, healthier choice for you, or if this is just what you're doing with guys because you're just doing it. In a way, it doesn't matter. I don't want you to fixate on, "Okay. Therefore, I must date women." It's not about that. It's about recognizing your patterns. It's about recognizing your choices because whatever gender you're dating, you are investing in and tripling down on the unhealthy dynamics and running as fast as you can from the healthy dynamics.

Tracy:              Yes.

Jessica:            And that's you. That's nothing to do with this guy that you're trying to get over. That is just a you thing to be able to own, right?

Tracy:              Definitely. Yeah. I think, though, part of everything is I kind of do know that it's not really about him because this has been acted out in other relationships. And I think that's part of why I wrote in, is I don't want to take these patterns into future relationships. But I'm not sure if I'm always seeing myself clearly enough to clock.

Jessica:            Right.

Tracy:              That is my pattern. That is what I'm doing. And so I just—I need more awareness or help finding that awareness.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. So here's what I got for you. You are currently in this thing with Joe. I made up his name. Okay. You are currently in this thing with Joe, and here's the move. Don't call him. Don't unfreeze him. Don't text him. There's nothing to process. Everything has been said. Everything has been tried. There is nothing more. Now, forgive me because I'm about to go full triple Capricorn on you. Are you ready for that?

Tracy:              Ready. Ready.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. 100 percent of your obsessions, thoughts, ruminations, 100 percent of you feeling like he's better and you're worse, 100 percent of you thinking he's worse and you're better, 100 percent of your memories of the past and your projections into the future are your pattern. And the feelings that they trigger are valid. The thoughts that they trigger are part of an obsessive-compulsive style, and I don't mean this in—I'm not a therapist, not in that way. But these behaviors are obsessive. These behaviors are compulsive, right?

                        So an obsessive-compulsive-style nature—Mercury in Scorpio. Okay. And every time those thoughts and feelings emerge inside of you, my advice to you is to either distract with something neutral—so put on your favorite music—videos of kittens. They're very distracting—that kind of a thing, something that is neutral and distracting and engages your attention. Or get to journaling. And instead of journaling about him—don't journal about him—journal about your thoughts and your feelings.

                        So there's this part of you that wants to be like, "Okay, so his parents pay for his shit, and he does this, and he does that, and then he does this, and he could have said that, and he could have done this." Every time you catch yourself fixating on what he said or did or thought or felt or could have said or could have did—all that kind of shit—what you would then journal about is, "I am fixating on what he said and what he did. I don't really understand why I'm fixating on his thoughts and his feelings, when I am actually the one who's having the thoughts and the feelings. What am I actually feeling?" Talk to yourself in the journal as a way to start to understand that you're having a hard time being in your own emotional body and in your own physical body and in your own brain.

                        And so, instead of staying with your own thoughts, feelings, and impulses, you're fixating on something outside of you. Does that make sense?

Tracy:              Complete sense. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So I will tell you—let's say you take my advice. You will be miserable. It will be awful. I'm so sorry. Okay. It's terrible. I want to just acknowledge that, because what I'm recommending that you do is exactly what you're doing now, but instead of having an itch, having an itch, having an itch, and then scratching the itch, and then the itch gets itchier, and the itch gets kind of sore, and it becomes an open wound, and now you have to wait, and then—fuck—it has to scab over, and then it has to heal—instead of doing that whole thing, you're just living with the itch.

                        And the truth is living with the itch until the itch passes is better. It is a shorter amount of itching. However, your very human mind says, "Scratch the itch. Scratch the itch. Scratch the itch." And all of your habits and all of your impulses say, "Scratch the fucking itch so it stops itching." And so it's breaking habits, which is really hard to do.

Tracy:              Yeah. But it's what I want to do.

Jessica:            Yes. You're ready. You're super ready.

Tracy:              That's nice to hear.

Jessica:            You are super ready. You are currently going through not one but two transits from Uranus. You've got Uranus opposite your Ascendant. It started in June of 2024. It'll be over in March of 2026. And then Uranus opposite Pluto will start at the end of May of this year. And so these transits—one hasn't really started yet, so we're not going to really focus on that.  But the Uranus opposition to the Ascendant means you're ready to change. It means you're ready to change who you choose to be in intimate, one-on-one relationships.

                        And it also means that between now and March of 2026, there's a lot of energy for you to become different. It won't happen on its own. That's the promise. Okay? You have to choose it. And choosing to be different is like taking a really long hike somewhere that's not always that pleasant, and you're not sure where you're going to end up. It's challenging. And the truth of the matter is going back to him or going back to another person like him—it's the devil you know. And there's a lot of comfort in that. And the truth is that most humans—we choose to engage with the behaviors that we know bring us pain because of the familiarity of it.

Tracy:              Yeah. As we're talking, I just keep thinking about—I'm like, "Is this all just, like—goes back to childhood?"

Jessica:            Everything does for all of us. I'm going to say a hard yes. Absolutely, it does. And also, at a certain point—and you're right now how old?

Tracy:              29.

Jessica:            29. Yeah. It always goes back to childhood. If I do readings with people in their 80s, we talk about childhood. Your childhood is always the base and foundation for all of it. Childhood is really, really it. And also, at a certain point—and that point is post-first Saturn Return, which you are very—as of February of 2025, you are post-Saturn Return. It is about childhood. It's also about who you choose to be. It's also about your choices.

                        And the way that we sidestep embodying familial patterns is by choosing differently and taking agency for who we choose to be. And so, when we come back to that part of you that loves the feeling of being in a burning building—whether or not that makes sense doesn't fucking matter. There's a part of you like, "That's love. If it's burning me up from the inside, it's love." Right?

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            That part of you is a part of you, but it doesn't need to be the part of you that drives your life. There are lots of ways of playing with our impulses. You can have a really healthy relationship with somebody who you play fight with. You can have a really healthy relationship with somebody where you basically play with fire in bed in a consensual, clear way as opposed to in the way you do it, which is just like the actual interpersonal dynamics.

Tracy:              Playing with your impulses—that made a lot of sense, like, all of it. And then what you were saying about what I'm dong is—and I think maybe I didn't quite click that.

Jessica:            Sure. So what you're doing is, for instance, with the example of Joe—and Joe is just an example. He is not the creator of this dynamic for you. Again, I cannot stress enough how unspecial Joe is, okay? And I know he feels really special to you, so I know that's a little hurtful, and I'm so sorry. And also, you are welcome. He is not that special. It's both, right?

Tracy:              Yes. Yes. Thank you.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. So what you're doing with Joe is you have this dynamic where everything goes great, and then one of you does something fucked up to the other one. And then there's drama, and then everything is intense, and then it's like, "We have to fix it, or I have to get rid of him, or I have to run towards him." It's like all this incredible drama, all this intensity.

Tracy:              Yes.

Jessica:            So that is self-destructive shit right there. And what I'm saying is there are ways of playing with energy with your partner where you get out some of the—I'm going to call them willies. It's not willies that are driving you to do shit like that. But you can get out your intensity, but it's not through a real dynamic of harming each other. It's through play. It's through just fucking with energy in different ways but being true to yourself, right?

Tracy:              That makes sense.

Jessica:            Yeah. I mean, I love when you're like, "Okay. He comes over, and we fuck with ceramics and we have this lovely, kind of wholesome time together," it sounds like. It sounds really lovely when it works. And I want to say that it is really healthy and great to be able to say, "Okay. Joe and I have this really unhealthy, unsustainable relationship. And there are things within that that I like. I like how tall he is, and I like that he wants to hang out with me and throw clay, and I like all these things. And I have to keep that in mind because it's nice to know," instead of saying, "Oh my God. I have all these things with him. They're so amazing. How could I ever find this with somebody else? This is so special and unique." Do you see the difference in that?

Tracy:              Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Because you are wanting to change, what needs to change is the way you hold your thoughts and feelings. Trying to change your thoughts and your feelings is—it's too bananas. It's too big of a goal. Changing how you hold them—that's actually much more achievable. Does that make sense, the difference?

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Now, are you dating anyone else right now?

Tracy:              No.

Jessica:            Okay. And do you tend to always be dating somebody?

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay. So that's what part of this is for you, right? It's your fear of being alone compels you to—if you're single for a certain amount of time, then you return to the scene of whatever last crime, right? So you opened up our conversation by saying, "I still think about the person I dated in high school."

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Right. Mm-hmm. And for you, what I want to say is that that is not magic. It's not serendipity. It's not anything other than—I'm guessing you also think about jeans you love that you had when you were like 15.

Tracy:              Oh my gosh, yes. And actually, it was a specific pair. They were, like, denim on the front and purple velvet in the back. And they were awesome.

Jessica:            So you see what I'm saying.

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            You see what I'm saying.

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            It's a rainy day in Portland.

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            It's a sunny day in LA. You're treating it like it's Glinda the Good Witch coming down in a bubble in a Technicolor world, and it's not. It's a sunny day in LA. It's just how you are. You fixate on something that felt good once, and in your sad moments or your lonely moments or your scared moments, you tell yourself that that was the best thing, and if you had that best thing once again, that you would be better.

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And that's not true. It's just a compulsion you have. It's not a truth. And so I am not saying this to you with the expectation that you're going to stop having those thoughts and feelings. You're never going to stop believing in the jeans with the purple butt. That's real. But I want to say that if you actually had those jeans today, you probably wouldn't wear them the way you think you did. You wouldn't, right?

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            It's that there's this part of you that likes to return back. You return back to a feeling. And that's only because you want the feeling now. And so the better able you are to recognize when you're fixating on a person or a thing that what you're really fixating on is the feeling you remember having—you may not have even had that feeling, but the feeling that you remember having. And that's what you're craving in that moment.

                        So, when you fixate on the boyfriend from being a teenager, what you're talking about is you were innocent. You didn't know better. It was a time when things were good, and you didn't know what bad was going to feel like. It was a different time.

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Does that resonate?

Tracy:              Sorry. Yeah. It does.

Jessica:            Yeah. And that's not a thing that you can go back to. That's a thing of the past. Are you somebody who's scared of getting old?

Tracy:              I don't know. I claim that I'm not, but I don't know. I don't think—

Jessica:            Do you kind of idealize being young?

Tracy:              Young-hearted, but—because my dad, he is so vibrant and lively, and he's older. And I don't see old as being old, I guess. But I do very much—keep that spirit of mischief alive is very important to me, and playfulness is very important to me.

Jessica:            What about your mom? You mentioned your dad, but your dad's a dude, right? So it's a weird thing to compare yourself to, only because of how different aging is for the genders as projected onto us by society, right?

Tracy:              Yeah. My mom's just more difficult. So my mom—I just recently—throughout these last, maybe, two years, we've been having a really difficult relationship—I mean, obviously, prior before that, but I think I started realizing things that she had done to me as a child were actually not okay. And it was really hard for me to set up this boundary.

                        And so I know this about her, but I guess I never thought about her and aging. And my mom—she had a lot of health complications. I see her being very frail and not taking care of herself. Even though she's six years younger than my dad, she seems not vibrant and healthy. Yeah, I mean, I guess maybe when I see her, that does make aging seem a little bit scary because it's—you know, am I going to end up like my mom and my—she's always talking about how we have a special family disease. And I think that she has mental illness, severe mental illness. And I think that that plays out in the way she cares for herself rather than this disease she talks of that's named after our family and everything.

Jessica:            Wow. Wait. So there's an actual family disease?

Tracy:              No, Jessica, I think she's making it up.

Jessica:            Oh. Wow.

Tracy:              And I feel like such a fucking asshole for saying that or thinking that, but I just—I genuinely feel like she's like—I don't know if she has dementia.  I don't know what reality she lives in. I mean, maybe it's real, and maybe I'm a dick, and maybe all this stuff is so accurate. But—

Jessica:            So wait. She says there's a family disease, but she hasn't told you what the family disease is?

Tracy:              It's like an autoimmune disease that even the doctors apparently can't figure out, and it runs in our genetics.

Jessica:            Is what she's telling you. And does she tell you this her whole life, or is that something she started talking about recently?

Tracy:              This probably came up maybe five to seven years ago.

Jessica:            Okay. And how old is she? Do you mind if I ask?

Tracy:              She was born in 1969.

Jessica:            Okay. So she's not very old.

Tracy:              No.

Jessica:            She's not very old at all.

Tracy:              But she's so frail and feeble, and she has diabetes, and she just eats sugar all the time.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

Tracy:              She doesn't go outside. She doesn't go for walks. She just doesn't take care of herself at all.

Jessica:            Oh, that's really rough. Okay. So there's so much in here, but I want to hold this one piece, which is your mom's way of holding reality and communicating makes you feel bananas and like you don't know—if she says the sky is purple, and you're like, "I guess it could—is it purple?" it theoretically could be purple, but I'm looking, and it's blue. It fucks with your sense of self. And what you're sharing—it's not that different than what you have with Joe.

Tracy:              Yeah. I actually had that thought one time when he was at my house, and I was just listening to him talk, and I felt like, "You're my mom."

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. And the way that you've handled it with your mom, this dynamic, is sometimes fighting and sometimes just being like, "Well, you're my mom and I love you, so I gotta just fucking suck it up."

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And that's what you're doing with Joe, and that's what you've done with the guys you've dated, yeah?

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So there's the very real issues with your mom, like maybe she's dealing with dementia. She was born in 1969. She's probably going through menopause. It could be mental health stuff as being triggered by menopause. Have you talked to her about that?

Tracy:              We've tried to talk, but I set kind of a boundary with her, and I told her I won't talk to her unless she gets therapy. And she won't do that.

Jessica:            She's not doing that. No. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I see that. Your mom's not doing that. Okay. So, that said, there could be any number of things. But what's important in the context of our larger conversation is somebody that you love is not safe, and it's hard to know how to be safe around them, how to show up for them without completely invalidating yourself. It sounds like pure chaos. But also, am I correct in seeing that she loves you and you love her?

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. So, if it was like, "Fuck this lady. I don't care about this lady," and all these dramatic things, in a way, that would be easier. It wouldn't, but in a way, right? In the context of our larger conversation. But instead, this dynamic that—it looks to me like this dynamic has been playing out your whole life, even though it might have taken a new shape in the past several years. Am I right about that?

Tracy:              Oh, completely.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Tracy:              I feel like I was born for my mom to have a comfort.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. You have a Pluto/Venus conjunction. That's not uncommon, unfortunately, with that. Your mom felt that she needed to repress a whole lot in herself. Were you raised with religion?

Tracy:              I was raised Catholic.

Jessica:            Were you guys religious when you were being raised?

Tracy:              Yeah. Yeah. So, growing up,  we went to church every Sunday, but my mom would sometimes just stay home and sleep. It was more something my dad did.

Jessica:            I mean, it looks like your mom, when she married her dad, made a decision to stop being herself. And whether that's mental health stuff, whether that's patriarchy and her just feeling like, "Well, now that I'm wife and a mother, I don't get to be a person," or something else, I don't know.

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            But in a way, it doesn't—of course, it matters, but in the context of this conversation, what is really important is that you didn't have a safe place to just be yourself even though you were loved. And as an adult seeking love, you have this habit of being enveloped by someone who can't really see you for who you are and who you don't really get to be safe with. That feels familiar to you. That feels like home, even though you left home and it's not what you want.

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. For whatever it's worth, I mean, you're in a really big club, like a really, really big club. So you don't need to beat yourself up about that. That's just being a person. But in order to break this pattern and step into yourself, it's about recognizing when that pattern starts to emerge either in your own thinking or feelings or in a dynamic with someone else, and just practice being aware of it because when you're aware of it, you can say to yourself, "All right. I'm going to make a different choice."

And when you make a different choice, what ends up happening is, first, you feel worse. I mean, again, the reason why you're not making a difference choice is because you're choosing the shortest, quickest way to feel different.

Tracy:  Yeah. I mean, I love to smoke weed for that exact reason.

Jessica:            I bet. So do you have any mobility impairment? Can you jump is what I'm asking.

Tracy:  Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. You can jump. Okay. So I'm going to give you what might sound like really weird advice. Before you smoke weed, before you cyberstalk someone, before you start obsessing, jump and jump and jump and jump.

Tracy:              Okay.

Jessica:            I know that sounds weird, but you have a Mars/Jupiter conjunction in Sagittarius intercepted your first house. And that wants you to physically run or to jump or to kick or to punch. So, if you have a heavy bag or a speed bag and you learn how to do some boxing, that could work. If you can go for a run, that's great. But usually, jumping is the quickest, shortest thing you can do. Do you know what I mean? It's also really good for your bone.

                        So the point is to jump up and down. Thrash. If you're at work, go to the bathroom if you can. I have this backyard, and it's full of all these garden cats. That's what they call them in Oakland, is garden cats. They're basically just feral cats who live in your garden. And I would watch these cats fight each other in a way that I had never seen, I'd only seen in cartoons, where they became like this massive ball of fur, and then they really were fucking going at each other. And there would be actual huge tufts of cat fur all over the place afterwards. Have you ever seen this in real life?

Tracy:              I haven't. I—cartoons.

Jessica:            Yeah, in cartoons. I had seen it in cartoons. But I saw it in real life, and I was horrified. And then these motherfuckers would walk away. They would sit in opposite sides of the garden, groom themselves, and be fine. And the reason why they were fine is because, before they sat down to groom themselves and lick their wounds, they shook. I'm sure you've seen cats or dogs shake their whole bodies out, right?

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            It's moving adrenaline through the body because when we have really intense anxiety spikes or emotional spikes or spikes of trauma, all this adrenaline gets bunked up in the body. I am not using good psychological or physiological terms, so don't quote me on this. But the adrenaline—we want to let it course through the body. We want to shake it out because it's engaging it. And when it's engaged, you're using your agency; you're being more conscious.

Tracy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            This is part of why people like to stim. It shakes out energy.

Tracy:              Yeah, because I started taking kung fu classes, and I feel like that has—what's brought me to being to the point where I'm ready to change and be different.

Jessica:            Can I tell you combat is your BFF? Capoeira, kickboxing, kung fu—I encourage you to fuck with all of those things over the course of your life. Combat is your BFF. Finding a place where it's healthy and appropriate and boundaried to come at something, to really come at something, is so good for you. So, if you have kung fu moves you want to pull instead of jumping up and down, do that. It's just about really using your body. And then you can return to the thought or the feeling or whatever, and you might return different, like a little bit more self-possessed.

Tracy:              Yeah. That feels good.

Jessica:            So, all of this said, have I answered your question?

Tracy:              I think that I just need to do the work at this point. I don't feel a lack of clarity on how to move forward.

Jessica:            The way you get over your ex is stop trying to get over your ex, because getting over your ex is not super realistic because you're not really under your ex; you're under your own compulsions. And your compulsions are fixated on your ex. And given the right mood, it's focused on your ex from high school.

Tracy:              Yeah. Definitely. Do you feel like, for me, it's just best to not have—because—okay. So I kind of already know the answer is yes, be single for a while; explore that.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm.

Tracy:              But then there's that part of me that gets scared, that's like, "But for how long?" And is this like an assignment where it's like, okay, you have to be single for a year? Would that be—

Jessica:            No. Okay. I got the answer. I got the answer. So, first of all, if you're scared of being single, you should totally be single.

Tracy:              Yes.

Jessica:            That's just real talk. Be single, and if you meet somebody who sparks a vibe, explore it. Explore it with clarity that you have a series of compulsions, and you have a series of self-destructive behaviors with sexual and romantic partners and that you need to take responsibility for those. And there's no magic person who is worth stepping back into those behaviors with.

Tracy:              Yeah. Okay.

Jessica:            So let's say you're like, "I'm going to be single," and then in one month, you meet somebody and you're like, "Vibes. Vibes. I must explore." Okay. Cool. Explore. Explore them, but don't do your patterns. And if you catch yourself being like, "Oh, I've just met this girl and I feel really safe, and she gets me, and she respects my boundaries, and we have a great time together. And now I want to run for hills," instead, say to her, "Hey. I have a hard time being in healthy relationships. This feels really nice. I'm having the impulse to run. I don't want to, but if I act weird, that's what's up." And stay.

                        And if you meet another Joe in different clothes, then the first time you get evidence of him not being accountable, not showing up—it doesn't matter—gender really genuinely does not matter. I'm just using the examples you've given me, right? If they are not accountable, if they are an abandoner, if they are ultimately not available for what it is that they say they want or what it is you know you need, then instead of trying to work it out, say, "This is great. This is great. This is an example of what I don't want. I can just choose to not engage with it. How cool." And then go be miserable and get over them.

Tracy:              Okay.

Jessica:            So the intention is to stay single so that you can come to greater self-awareness. And if the Universe says to you, "Okay. Cool, but why don't you practice self-awareness with this hottie?" then okay. Try that.

Tracy:              Okay.

Jessica:            You don't have to be rigid is what I'm trying to get at. You just want to stay true to the lessons.

Tracy:              That helps.

Jessica:            Okay. Good. I'm so glad that helps.

Tracy:              Thank you.

Jessica:            It is my pleasure. And again, I'll just reiterate you're going through a Uranus transit that is here to help. And so, if there's ever a time where you can move through your compulsions and be different, this is it. And in 2026 or '7—I can't remember. It's in '26 or '7, so it's very soon, in the next year or two—Pluto is going to trine your Venus. It's a great time for falling in love. So, if you do your work—actually, let me give you the exact date of when it starts. It begins in February of 2026.

                        In less than a year, you start to go through a Pluto trine to Venus, so once-in-a-lifetime transit. Fantastic, okay? Now, the cool thing about this transit is it can bring you really profound love. So my advice to you is work your fucking buns off on this so that when and if love comes your way, you will experience a different kind of love; you will have some skill accrued in recognizing your patterns as they're happening and making different choices within them.

Tracy:              Yes. Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Tracy:              So working my buns off on this, just meaning bring greater clarity of more self—awareness. Cultivate self-awareness. Recognize patterns.

Jessica:            Yeah. Act on your impulses differently. Yeah.

Tracy:              Yeah. Impulse control—I know that's such an issue.

Jessica:            It is.

Tracy:              It's a running, rampant theme in my life.

Jessica:            It's a biggie. It's a biggie. And impulse control simply means redirect your impulses when your impulses tell you to run off a cliff. It doesn't mean tamp down on that impulse. I mean, maybe in that specific example, yeah, tamp down. But it might mean, okay, your impulses are screaming, "Run off this cliff. Run off this cliff," so you turn around and run in a different direction. You still run, just maybe not off a cliff. You know what I mean?

                        So it's not about trying to be a person without strong impulses. It's about having a different relationship to your impulses so you can cap off the most self-destructive behaviors before they get you in big, big trouble.

Tracy:              Okay. I hear.

Jessica:            Okay. Good. Okay. Good. We did it.

Tracy:              Yes. Oh gosh. Jessica, thank you. Thank you.

Jessica:            My pleasure. Take really good care.