Here’s a bit that vividly illustrates what it’s like to have Saturn (control, responsibility) mashed up with Mercury (communications) and Mars (your desires).

“Well I was going to call you a few times over the years. One time I almost did. I really did almost call you. I went as far… well, P, I had the phone book in my hand. I had it in my lap, actually and I sat there with it for oh… I probably sat there for a half hour trying to decide what I should do. Call you? Or not call you.”

“Well you should have called. I have no idea what I’d have been doing at the time but I can’t imagine… I’m sure I would have been happy to hear from you at any time in my life,” I said. “I’m sure.”

“Oh, I was sure too. At least I thought I was sure,” he said. The soldier has Pisces. “I thought you would probably like hearing from me. Hell, P. I always thought you loved me. I was pretty sure you did love me, so yeah. It wasn’t that I was afraid you wouldn’t be glad to hear from me, it was just the circumstances at the time.”

“What circumstances? What were the circumstances?”

“Well we were getting ready to go out on this mission.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And I didn’t think we were going to make it back. I mean it. See, I had been on a lot of missions and they’re all different. And some of them were not so bad. Not so dangerous, I mean. Some of them were relatively easy, actually. A few of them were pretty dangerous. And a couple of them, I would have to say, were ridiculously dangerous but this one? Well I had really thought about it and I just didn’t see any way we were going to be able to get back from this one. It seemed to me that it was a suicide mission. You know. They were sending us out to be killed.”

“Um…”

“Well, I just didn’t know. But I didn’t see how we could survive, so I thought they might be sending us out… I thought it might be part of another, larger mission we didn’t know about.”

“I see.”

“Because I spent hours and days and then weeks trying to see a way we could possibly pull this off and come back alive and I just couldn’t see any way. I mean, there’s always a chance, right? There has to be some kind of chance of surviving but if there was, I sure couldn’t think of it.”

“I see. So you were planning to die?”

“No. I never wanted to die. I wanted to live. I always wanted to live, P. And I was trying to figure out how we could go do this and not die and I just couldn’t see any way it could possibly be done.”

“Tell me. Explain this.”

“See, we think these things out in advance. You have to. And whatever it was we were doing, I could generally see how it was going to work out. I mean something may be hard. We might be going to do something that would be hard to pull off, but I could see it was doable. I could imagine how it could be done, but this wasn’t like that. I did not think this thing was doable. It was not doable at all and as far as I was concerned, my chance of coming back alive after this mission would be less than 1%.”

“Well Jesus Christ! Can you turn a mission like that down?”

“Yeah. Yes, you can. If you don’t want to go on a mission, then you don’t go. If somebody feels bad about something… P. the last thing you want when you’re doing something like this is to have someone there who doesn’t want to be there or doesn’t feel right about it. So yeah. You can say no to a mission but you think I’m going to do that? Turn down a mission, just because I’m going to die from it?” He laughed. “This was my life, P. Look. I was an SF soldier. It’s what I chose for my life. It’s what I always wanted to do and what I always wanted to be and if was going to kill me then it was going to kill me. And hey. If I am going to be worried about dying then I’ve got no business being in Special Forces, do I?”

“No, I guess not. So this is what you’re doing? You’re going on a suicide mission?”

“Yeah. I thought I was but no one knew about it. I wasn’t going to tell anyone. I thought this is was what was going to happen but what am I going to do? Tell my family? Tell my mother?”

“No.”

“No. Hell no. Hey mom! I’m just calling to tell you I am going to be dead by end of the month.” He laughed. “I couldn’t do that. So yeah. I was just going to go out and not come back. I was sure this was what was going to happen. And fact is it’s not that big a deal to be killed on one of these missions. It happens all the time. Are you kidding? SF soldiers are killed all the time and if it happened to me… if I became one of the dead ones then I’d just be one of the dead ones.”

“I see. So you don’t care if you get killed?”

“Of course I care! I never wanted to die. I’m just saying it’s not that uncommon to die when you’re on a mission. And if it happens… well it’s not like I’d be the first SF soldier to die on a mission. And I sure as hell wouldn’t be the last.”

“I see.”

“But this was my life, P. I chose this life. I wanted it, I got it and by God I was not going to back out just because I am probably going to die.” He laughed. “So that was that. I had decided I was going to go. And I was going to try to come back alive but you know. I just thought that was going to be impossible.”

“So you’ve got the phone book?”

“Yes. I had the phone book but I never opened it.”

“Why not?”

“I thought you might be in there. I thought you would be in there and I knew if your number was there, I’d dial it.”

“Okay, so what did you do instead?”

“Well I had this money. I had a little bit of money saved. I don’t know what I was saving for. But I had been in SF about seven years by then and I’d saved this money and seeing as I was going to die, I thought I ought to spend it. You know. May as well spend this money since I won’t be coming back.”

“I see.”

“So who do you think I want to spend it on? Who do you think I want to spend it with? “Elsa P, of course!”

We both laughed.

“So I had like two weeks before we were going to leave. And I thought I ought to call her. I ought to call Elsa P and see if she wants to run away with me for awhile…”

I laughed nervously.

“I ought to go get her from wherever she’s at. And I don’t know. We’ll go to Vegas or something. We’ll go have ourselves a fling! A 10 day fling! Because I was leaving in like 14 days and I’d have had to leave you to go get ready. I would have had to leave you.”

“Yeah, but I’d have loved that. I’d have run off with you to do something like that in a second.”

“Yeah, but I couldn’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“E, I just couldn’t. And I am ashamed to say I came damned close. I came closer to calling you than I ever should have come. But in the end I put the phone book down.”

“Damn! Mistake! Mistake! Never have a thing like that occur and not do it! How could you?”

“P, I had to. Because I could think ahead to what would happen.”

“What?”

“Well I figured we’d see each other and that would be it. This was about 10 years after the last time I saw you, by the way. 9 or 10 years, I think because it was my 7th year in… and anyway, I hadn’t seen you in awhile but I know how we are. And I was pretty sure what would happen if we were to see each other.”

“What?”

“Well, we’d find a bed for one thing. That would be the first thing we’d do and you know the rest. We’d get wrapped up all tight and be in love all over again.”

“Is that what you thought?”

“Yes.”

I laughed and blushed. “So?”

“So? So? So now we’re all in love and then I leave. A week later, you try to get hold of me and find out I’m dead! What do you think that would have done to you?”

I didn’t say anything.

“That would have killed you, P. You would have been… you’d have been hurt for sure. I’m not sure you could’ve gotten over something like that. How would you? How could you? How are you going to get over that and how the hell could I do that to you in the first place?”

“Um…”

“Because I would not have been able to tell you anything. Nothing about the mission for sure. And I am not going to be able to tell you I think I am going to die, either. Obviously!”

“Why not? Why can’t you tell me that?”

“Why not?” He laughed. “Are you kidding me? If I told you I thought I was going to die, do you think you’d have let me go? What are you going to say? There’s the door? Go on through it? Right. You’d have never done that. You’d kill me yourself before you let me go die somewhere… let someone else go… get to kill me. You aren’t dying on some mission, motherfucker! Not if I have anything to say about it. I will kill you right here in this hotel room before I let that happen, you bastard son of a bitch! Well you motherfucker! You think you’re gonna walk out of here and go get killed? Over my dead body! I can just hear you, P.”

I didn’t answer because he was right.

“So anyway, I put the phone book down and I never picked it up again after that. I decided to leave you alone no matter what. For the rest of your life, I was going to not bother you because it just wasn’t fair. I chose this. This was my job. You didn’t ask to be part of it. You didn’t want to be part of it so I decided I had no business dragging you in.”

“I see. I guess I ought to thank you.”

“Well, I don’t know. Because then we went out and we came back. And then I thought, look at this. You’re alive, you dumb ass! You should have called her! You could have gone to Vegas with Elsa P!”

We both laughed.

“And that turned out to be the worst mission I was ever on. The most dangerous, I mean. It was the most risky one for sure. And there was one other that was nearly as bad, but that came later. I thought I was going to die on that one too, but I didn’t think about calling you that time.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’d already decided it was something I was never going to do. You cannot bother Miss P. You cannot call her no matter what’s going on in your life or how bad you want to. That was a rule I made for myself and I stuck to it.”

“I wish you wouldn’t have done that.”

“Well, I’m sorry but I did. So thank God you contacted me or we wouldn’t be talking right now.”

Have you ever had to restrain yourself like this?

skip to “Quintessential Pisces“