The most intense storm that we’ve had in years just blew through town. The power is out all across the city and in parts of the cities nearby, too. I’m topless and sweaty in bed in my hot apartment, eating a too-full bowl of dilly pasta salad that would’ve gone bad in the fridge otherwise. We were sadly coming up on the four-hour mark of a power outage, after which perishables in the fridge start to get iffy, then spoil.
The power also went out eight weeks ago for most of the day. That time it felt personal — a car hit a pole that only knocked out power to my apartment complex, and I had just stocked the fridge and freezer before recovery from a medical thing. I went to throw out the newly-purchased perishables, but my roommate asked to keep the eggs. I didn’t want to risk it (Virgo), but she said they couldn’t have gone that bad in 8 hours and she would eat them (Gemini, and she was fine).
I’ve been thinking about my relationship with risk recently. (Kismet: I checked the Chani astrology app for some keyword inspo to think about this new moon, and the blurb about my day is about risk taking.) Saying that I am not a risk taker feels like I’m taking a personality quiz. It’s true for me though — I’m a girl who would much rather be safe than sorry, and I know a significant factor in that is my high level of anxiety. I’m so much less anxious day-to-day than I used to be, but I still have a higher baseline than most.
Gaslighting myself out of it with CBT sessions actually did help some when I was younger. I remember one of the exercises my therapist had me try for social anxiety was going to the library, finding an area with a lot of people studying, then picking out a book from the shelf and dropping it loudly. In full view of everyone. And just standing there and not picking it up for 10 seconds. It was agonizing every time, but I’ll admit that I did get somewhat desensitized with practice. Explaining to someone who doesn’t have anxiety why exposure therapy exercises like this feel awful really highlights the irrationality of it all. I’m worried that… people will look at me? And judge me? And maybe, to make it worse, they’re hot, and they’re looking at me and judging me? It’s embarrassing to tell people this!
The trick is that through practice (…and gaslighting) these thoughts become less loud and less dire. You learn through repeated exposure that even though your body is reacting like you’re about to be hit by a bus, your fears usually don’t play out and there aren’t significant consequences to what you’re anxious about anyway. There’s just a book on the ground.
(CBT doesn’t apply as well to anxiety that’s related to concrete possibilities, like illness and car crashes, or to things like trauma and PTSD.)
I’ve been thinking about risk in part because my anxiety has been worse lately. Being more isolated for weeks because of that recovery put me back in a similar place that I and many other people were in, early in the pandemic. To oversimplify: less exposure, more anxiety.
I’m also thinking about risk as it relates to creativity. Without going on a full writing about writing tangent: it is a risk to start a creative project, to share it, to keep going. It’s not that this new moon in Leo has me feeling uncharacteristically bold, ready to burst out of what’s been holding me back — I wish astrology worked like that! It’s that I’m working with the new moon energy and setting an intention to move through some of this, even just a little. To put the book back on the shelf.
The sun has set now and I have candles lit across the apartment. Instead of going with my roommate to her dad’s place which has power, I’m going to sleep here tonight. It feels appropriate to have a dark night for the new moon. I smell lavender and lemongrass in the warm, stagnant air. With the apartment building’s floodlights out and no moon overhead, the tree line visible from my window is unlit. For the first time in the three years I’ve lived here, I see the trees blinking with fireflies.
The song I had on repeat before the power went out.