JUNE
Well, well, well, Virgo. This month it finally happens. The impossible becomes (briefly) possible. This month you finally get around to heeding the unsolicited advice you’ve been receiving for over a decade. That’s right. This month, you try meditation.
Meditation isn’t something you necessarily want to do but it’s something you want to have already done. Like laser hair removal, you want the barren follicles, but you’d prefer to skip the part in which your legs are in “frog position” while a technician taps you with a fire sword and asks about your holiday plans.
It’s difficult for most people to see their own behavior clearly, which is the only conceivable reason I can imagine for your surprise that so many people suggest you develop a meditation practice.
You’ve elicited this social prescription in numerous ways, most typically by simply sharing your thoughts. It is not difficult to assess your impressive altitude of high strung, and everything makes you cry. Happy, sad, shocking—everything.
Even though you are never happy to be told you should consider meditating as a direct followup to someone witnessing your True Nature, it’s happened so many times now that you’ve actually begun to believe this holy practice may be your ticket to success.
Without realizing it, meditation has gone from being a topic that makes you roll your eyes (due to jealous insecurity) to one that inspires wistfulness. Instead of dismissing meditation as an elaborate prank organized by every person you’ve ever spoken to, you begin to view it as the answer to all of your problems.
You’ll acknowledge that sure, you’re a bit of a disaster now, but one day you’re going to get around to meditating and you’ll be a peaceful person who doesn’t sympathy cry when people talk about their own feelings. You experience wild fantasies in which you’re someone who doesn’t need to have a day unfold precisely as she’d planned (down to the minute) in order to be happy (ish).
You imagined meditation would transform you into someone chill who is perhaps less likely to make rude expressions at cars that speed through crosswalks you’ve entered (once the rude face was apparently inflammatory enough that a man on the receiving end of the face reversed back through the intersection so he could call Virgo a c*** b****).
Yes, the promise of meditative peace was intoxicating. But that won’t last long, Virgo. After an adult life bombarded with meditation-based suggestions, you finally meditate.
You are married to someone who meditates every single day, usually multiple times per day. Remarkably, he almost never suggests meditation could fix whatever affliction the sum of your behaviors equal. But since you’ve been abuzz with curiosity (or more precisely, writing your own fanfiction about what results meditation can deliver), he invites you to join him in a transcendental meditation on a pleasant Sunday afternoon.
You’ll sit cross-legged, palms up, as he gives you a mantra to repeat in your head for the duration of the meditation (15 minutes). This simple setup won’t be without its problems. For one, you are shocked to know that the 15 minutes is based on vibe alone, and won’t be corroborated with a timer (Virgo is someone who will set a timer to lay on the ground in anguish). This implants a gaping anxiety in your being. What if this means you’re meditating for way too long—say, 16 or 17 minutes? How can you trust your husband’s inner clock when, respectfully, any length of nap he takes he believes to be seven minutes long? Even the forty-five minute ones—he rises and is like, How long was that, seven minutes?
The physicality presents further trouble. You find that you don’t actually like sitting cross-legged, and instead choose to sit in shavasana (lay down). Then there are the wretched palms to consider. You don’t want 'em up, you decide, so they rest with you in whichever demented position you find the most comforting.
Remarkably, the meditation only goes downhill from there. The experience is acutely uncomfortable for you, both physically and mentally. Perhaps the easiest way to describe it is that you’ll feel itchy and consumed with unease. The meditation revolts you deeply, chemically. You change positions approximately sixty four thousand times during the alleged fifteen minute meditation, as the mental repetition of your mantra changes in tone from potentially peace inducing to ballistic anger.
You’ve never suffered silently, and your first failed meditation won’t be an exception. Once your husband exhales out of his own meditation, you waste no time in sharing that this experience was your own personal hell. As he floats back down to the mortal plane, you bombard him with vivid descriptions of Why Precisely you never wish to meditate ever again. He is polite, as he always is, but it’s clear that by minute 42 of your monologued repulsion that your point has landed and he would prefer to discuss something else. You ask him if this is a typical speed bump in the road to nirvana, and if it’s maybe worth pushing through to achieve the promised harmony declared by all who meditate. He tells you that absolutely not, you clearly are not meant for meditation and should never try again.
The experience whirls you into such an angry tizzy that you go searching for answers. Well, sort of. You listen to your podcast that recaps The Real Housewives and one of the hosts shares that meditating made her feel very irate for a while too. After years of trying to solve the mystery of her meditation-related fury, a meditation teacher shared with her that the mantra she’d been given was far too advanced for her level of experience, and this disparity was the source of her anger. You run to your husband to see if perhaps this could be true for your situation too. He looks at you with pity and reports that the mantra he gave you truly couldn’t be more basic. It’s a mantra a baby could use, it’s a mantra a little fish could use, etc.
You continue your research (listening to the recap podcast about The Real Housewives), and learn that when the other hosts meditates, she leaves the experience feeling profoundly fatigued. Apparently, feeling negative things after meditation is common, as meditation allegedly puts you in touch with your true feelings. If you’re running yourself ragged, meditation will show you how immensely tired you really are.
But what does that mean about your unbearable itchiness? Does this speak to a level of anxiety so high that sitting still results in a physical allergic response? These are questions you may never get the answers to, Virgo, since you’ve sworn off meditation for good. If burying your true feelings deep deep down allows you to avoid feeling uncomfortable for fifteen minutes, then that’s the path you’re going to take. Enjoy the self satisfaction that comes from loathing something many others cherish, Virgo.
I hope you continue to practice. We all deserve a special place in our personal hell once in a while! As always, your writing is superb!
"Even though you are never happy to be told you should consider meditating as a direct followup to someone witnessing your True Nature" lololol