This morning’s episode reminded me of another time I quite confusedly fell from grace. I was in 3rd grade at the time, and really proud about it. I was proud because I was starting 3rd grade when I was 6 years because I was a kick-ass little student. I had no idea the problems I was going cause and I mean, this would not have occurred to me in a million years.
I had a lot of Capricorn then, as I do now and my intention at that time was to complete two grades a year and then leave home and go have a wonderful life. I thought this was entirely doable and showed up the first day of school, ready to rock.
That weekend, I came home with a fat math book. I liked puzzles at the time so this was like being given Disneyland. I got home and started working through the book.
I finished 2/3 of the book on Saturday, maybe a little more and then quit, again due my Capricorn. Conservation, see? I did not want to run out of good times.
Puzzle books were hard to come by. I understood them to be expensive and since they could only be used once, my parents did not buy them so basically, I was saving my gold in this math book and I headed back to school on Monday.
Monday was a shock. I was foaming all over the mouth about my love of this math book and I quickly found out I was the only one who liked it. Matter of fact, the kids could not do the two pages we were assigned and when they found out I could… well I was a freak, I guess.
Within a week, they pulled me out of the class. This was a new school, see? I went to first grade in town, skipped second and we’d moved to the desert in the meantime. In whatever case they took me out of class and talked to me sweetly in baby-talk which was very confusing because my family has a Mars Mercury, signature.
They knew I could read. I read on a seventh grade level when I was five; this is why they skipped me so they decided to put me to work. There was no gifted programs back then, they didn’t exist.
My first assignment was to sit in this room, more like a large cubicle with a door because it was free-standing in the middle of a larger room and there was no ceiling. There was a desk in there, a chair, and a cassette tape recorder. They gave me a book and told me to read the book into the tape recorder, the idea being they would send the book and the tape home with remedial students to help them learn to read.
I didn’t like this assignment. For one thing, I did not like being in the room alone, never mind this one, with it’s tall beige walls as I am mildly claustrophobic. But besides that, I did not want to do this job! I wanted to have another math book, to advance to 4th grade, or 7th grade or high school for that matter but there I was and I was obedient so I read.
Apparently I read LOUD because some teacher or librarian / authority figure came in right away and told me to keep it down, to read quietly so as not to disrupt people. She said they could hear my voice booming out and I felt extremely ashamed and just about burst into tears. The woman closed the door softly and I did burst into tears.
Wiping my face on my arm, I started to read again and it wasn’t long before I was interrupted again… and fired.
“This isn’t going to work,” the woman explained. I stared. “I can still hear you out there and the word is humiliated. You said hu-mi-lated.”
I noted the mistake in my head and nodded to acknowledge my mistake. I waited to be punished and I was.
Having failed and fallen from my high place that I never wanted to hold in the first place, the woman sent me to the office, telling me they – the office – was just going to have to figure out something else to do with me. I had no idea what she meant.
I went to the office and the friendly secretary asked me in a normal, not a baby voice, “Can I help you?”
“I don’t know. You’re supposed to find something else to do with me” I said.
“Who told you that?”
“I don’t know.”
The secretary excused herself to go get the principal and long story short I wound up working for and with that secretary for the next 3 years.
I never did blend in and it’s not any different now. I don’t know what to do about the problems people have with me.
What would you do?
I still haven’t figured that one out, either. The only thing I can do is be pugnaciously me. What other option is there?
Elsa, I think you care waaaayyyyy too much how people see you. If I held stock in the opinions people held about me, I’d be hiding in my closet with a bucket under my face to stop the flooding. Not everyone’s going to like you. not everyone’s going to agree with you. But as long as you know that you’re living your life the best way that you can and without the greatest intention, you can’t worry about everyone else. This Aries stellium, I think, is a lesson to everyone that we need to be less concerned about how everyone is seeing us and more concerned about how we see ourselves. If we don’t know who we are then we will constantly let others decide for us.
excuse me, *with the greatest intention
It’s not that easy when you have Libra, DarkCourtesan. Even though you know you can’t please everyone, you can’t help but try, anyway.
That runs deeeeeep: be nice, be polite, don’t be gross. If you’re inherently gross, though, or repeatedly become so over time, then what’s a Libra to do?
Thank you DarkCourtesan. As someone who has been a misfit from birth, that is the lesson I am busy embracing right about now.
Actually, I am going to contact that secretary. I know her name, I see she is still alive, still married and I see her son on facebook… )
I have a pretty intense “FUCK IT!!” kind of chart with Moon, Mars and North Node in Aries; a stellium in Sag (Venus, Uranus and Saturn)..With an Aquarian sun, I had to make peace very early with the fact that I was never going to be like everyone else, and that’s okay. I took the Aries and backed my eccentricities with it’s courage. I have no Libra in my chart, so I don’t know what it is to have an overwhelming need to acquiesce. But my Pisces ascendant does tend to worry and want everyone to be comfortable..But it’s impossible to please everyone all of the time. I’ve just noticed a heavy theme of Elsa analyzing how everyone responds to her and sees her.
DarkCourtesan – I think I care a lot less than it seems. I just like to discuss things. 🙂
@elsa: “I never did blend in and it’s not any different now. ” I was always told that makes you a “sparkler” and people will either love to watch you or try to put you out. So guard your energy, as you have a light to shine.
On the second part, @elsa: “I don’t know what to do about the problems people have with me.” Well, seems to me that’s not for you to figure out, it’s their problem. It’s not like you’re banging down their door, making them partake in the blog or you.
Angie
Well I am endlessly fascinated with human interaction. A lifetime study. I just messaged the secretary’s son… 🙂
Oh dear. That story brings back memories. The same thing happened to me in middle school, except they put in a beige room like that all alone and didn’t give me anything to do, during English class. The teacher had basically told them after reading a short story I wrote (about Eleanor Roosevelt from her point of view, I still remember) that I was better at it than he was and there was nothing I could learn there. So they told me I could have permission to go sit in this completely bare empty room and do whatever I wanted, homework, draw or “whatever”. I thought it was going to be great, but it was awful, so boring and isolating. And the other kids found out right away and started to hate me. They complained to the principal and he had a talk with me asking if I wanted to come back to class to pacify them, was the way he put it. By then I was screwed, as I had no intention of pacifying the mean little a-holes and didn’t want to go back, so though I was not enjoying it I stayed in that little room, well out of spite I guess. Sigh. Ah the memories. And that was just one school. We moved around a lot.
I must say Elsa, you have been a great role model for me in terms of a duality that I kinda see from you on this blog. When I watch your youtube videos (not in a stalk-y way, but with interest in your astrological perspective), you seem very sure and strong. Then you write about falling from grace and being humbled and other human “flaws” and it shows that even tough chicks can be sensitive! I guess my comments earlier were coming from a protective fellow tough-chick place where I want every woman to be strong, cavalier and championing and not affected by the peanut gallery. Blame the Aries. lol
I would just continue to fly renegade. Screw ’em.
“I think I care a lot less than it seems. I just like to discuss things. :)”
I was going to say something like this but then thought that A) it would be out of line, B) it might stir a pot that didn’t need it, and C) I could be wrong. So I didn’t defend, in the end.
See? This is what the decision-making, people-pleasing side of Libra looks like, y’all: Do I defend my friend at the risk of offending (Libra Mars in the 4th pleases self) or bite my tongue to preserve peace (obviously making others happy)?
I just realized I didn’t answer the question. What I would do is probably obvious from my story…and that is, I won’t give in just to pacify someone. Probably the opposite, if they have a problem with me and I don’t deserve it.
I am human is the thing. I don’t have a facade. This was something my sister tipped me to, decades ago as she tried to tell me that other people did. I still can’t figure it out… I mean, it’s 20 years and I still can’t figure out.
Anyway, being interested in something and caring about are two very different things. I don’t know if I am tough. If I was, that would be a facade. Same with being sensitive. This is another potential facade, I guess.
If there is one thing I have figured out – people are going to whatever the hell they want when they look at me (Neptune). There is plenty to love (or to hate) about me, so it’s wide open.
The point of this, is that it is an interesting and unusual story. I try to put things on this blog that are not found elsewhere.
Thanks, Elsa. That’s definitely why *I* come here.
Here’s a cheat. Listen to what *I* say.
You say I am tough or sensitive. I say, I am or at least I was, a “kick ass student”.
I can’t do a thing about what you think of me or how you see me, for good or ill but I can tell you the feelings that I report having on this blog, and the experiences I recall are REAL. From that point on, it’s out of my hands.
You decide I am tough or not tough or have a dual nature. I don’t know if that is right or wrong or real or what because the other person decides I am a piece of shit, a liar, and mean as a snake. ::laughs::
Now this is the phenomena that intrigues me.
That woman was a total bitch.
Dark, I think you are new(ish) here, or maybe you are old under a new name but in whatever case, there is this:
https://elsaelsa.com/astrology/2010/09/23/astrologyrorschach-inkblot/
I suppose it’s a good thing the school didn’t figure out that you would be in court actually defending yourself…. on a regular basis , with “little to no expert help”. THAT’s Intelligence!!
Hmmm…. then again , maybe they did. Having you away from classmates (I suspect for a short time , and for certain classes) probably was their way of encouraging your “more responsible” side of personality.
I think people are just trained to label and classify. It provides a false sense of comfort in the chaotic world. But you just are who you are though. At the end of the day, hardly any description can *truly* provide a definitive identity for you, Elsa, or for anyone. In my humble opinion, anyways.
From now on, if anyone asks me what I think of Elsa, tough, not tough, a piece of shit, a liar, a mean snake, maybe I will just reply, “All of the above?” Haha.
No advice, was pretty much the same way myself, always working and with adults, schoolwork for fun and all stuff = being singled out as an oddball. Idk, if you’re like that, you’re like that, I’m a cardinal oddball and proud =)
My only advice, which is not actual advice -is to make sure to have Neptune transiting over your asc so you unknowingly phase out the ‘haters’.
I glad you mentioned court, glenn. I have an update on that – will post it in the right place.
On this other, if a person wants to consider how they don’t care what people think, then I become the person opposite them who DOES care what people think. But it’s not real. I mean it’s not real to the extreme.
…It was just an opinion. An observation. Not even based in fact. Because the only fact is, I DON’T know you. I only know your words and an occasional youtube video. Not once did I say you ARE tough or you ARE sensitive..I used the word SEEM, because I only have my perspective and cannot put a label on you. And that was my point from the beginning. It SEEMED as though you cared quite a bit about how people viewed you. It’s operative. Whether I’m new or not, I saw a pattern and I commented on it. The sheer amount of responses dedicated to my first post does nothing to counter my comment that you SEEMED too concerned with how people viewed you. At the end of the day, this is a blog where people get the opportunity to express their opinions on your posts..You even encourage it with many posts ending with questions. My intent was not to offend, but state an observation. Good day 🙂
I really meant no offense, Dark. I was just talkin’ to ya. 🙂 Sorry if it seemed edgy. I really didn’t intend it that way.
Offended? Please! Edgy is my middle name!! No offense taken, and I appreciate you greatly <3
Whew! 🙂
Okay! I was going to come back on here and say I should have slowed down my writing. Now that the sky isn’t falling,,,, well I’d have a cigarette right now, if I still smoked, LOL. It feels like that. 🙂
*LOL* Man, do I know that feeling… 😀
Seriously!
“I still haven’t figured that one out, either. The only thing I can do is be pugnaciously me. What other option is there?”
Haha SaD, this is me too – but I try to mitigate the pugnacious these days.
I was always a misfit, if you have a handicap you just ‘are’ (ie on the other side of some wall), never mind you might be twice as intelligent as all the rest of the kids (and three times more observant). Learning not to give a damn (even with two planets and Chiron in Libra) becomes a necessary part of life’s odyssey – but yes, watching how it all works is compellingly fascinating…
Wow elsa I wish I had your “problem”, chuckle.
(being ahead of your crowd and having the good sense to realize it)
I always have been a misfit, too. I have Cancer on the MC so people project onto me differently than they would Neptune IC in Scorpio, of course. In any case, people must realize sooner or later that I am not really the gentle, nurturing Mommy type, but really just a rebellious freedom-seeker, and by the time this happens, I have hit the road 🙂
I’ve always been a misfit. In my family, in school, online, even in the group of misfits I hung out with in high school, I was the misfit. To this day, I don’t understand why. I’m not mean, I’m not unfriendly, I’m not antisocial.. I’m admittedly introverted, but I know introverts who still ‘fit in’. I think that I just have an aura around me that repels people. Makes my Libra Moon sad.
It doesn’t sound to me like you failed. It sounds to me like you WERE failed.
What would I do? 🙂 I have similar stories from that age and I’m not surprised to know that. Took me a long time to embrace the “Freak.” But we are pretty good buds now
The failure was my feeling. It’s a Capricorn story. 🙂
As for being failed, I disagree. They had no place for me at that time and did their best to make one. It was a no win situation.
Elsa your story reminds me of my childhood and all the schools I went to.. But unlike you I was put in the dumb room and teachers pushed me aside. I had great relationships with all of the secretary’s too.
It was kind of funny, if you were stupid, you get to have extra gym classes instead of regular class. I mean what Sag would not pass up that opportunity. But a few years later they found out I was not stupid, as I was reading Shakespeare at 13 and translating it to my “special ed” tutor, who could not understand it all….opps..LOL
Haha – Elsa, is your Chiron being assaulted by transits too? Your story is sooo familiar to me. What I did was play by their rules but knew in my heart of hearts that I was the smartest person in the room. At this late date, I know it’s not always true, but boy it helped me get through it. I love your stories!!
You know something? I never really thought of the fall from grace thing until these two blog entries. I go through the exact same cycle at work, all the time, continually. It will help me when people are shouting about how awful I am to remember that they will come to me in a few weeks because I’m the only one who knows what they’re on about.
To which I should have added: Thanks for turning on the light for me on this one. <3
Here’s the theme song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9WH8AfakFs
“I know you used to love me but that was yesterday…”
But you know what? Fuck it. I got a husband now who wants to renew his vows to me on a yearly basis.
::chuckles and shakes head::
Land of extremes, bay-bee!
I can kind of relate here… For me, it has always been tragically difficult for me to fit in. Although, I was rarely picked on. In around second grade, I came to the realization that by being myself, I got respect. People were mostly friendly and treated me like an equal all the while keeping a certain distance. At around 3rd grade I was declared “gifted” and put in a (public) school with mostly upper crust types. It pained me to no end that I came from an immigrant family and that I lived in a single apt with my disabled mother and had sort of an on and off gypsy criminal for a dad (I love em both to death). I pretty much revealed nothing about myself, had no one over, and my confidantes were mostly people I knew online. I dealt with this by doing crazy shit, going on adventures, and running off for days at a time. In Hollywood, this could have led to a horrible situation, but I never did anything I didn’t want to do and I would never forfeit my integrity for any reason. By the time high school was half over I had a crowd and a crazy social life, but still felt like an outsider (in a band of outsiders). My friends started to tell me, “You know that you are intimidating, right?” I never thought of it that way, but I guess it was a coping mechanism. As was the reckless behavior. Since I’ve been an adult, I’ve had a pretty pain-free existence thanks to friends and a loving husband and some pretty good luck (maybe some strategy was involved). Yet, for the past 5 years I have had an insane difficulty directing my energy (just diagnosed adhd). I think early on I was programmed to thrive off of chaos and tragedy, and I feel kind of lost without it. And while I enjoy company and companionship, it is still so difficult for me to make friends (have changed cities twice in the past 5 years).
If you’re born a freak, offensive, weird, whatever, you pretty much just have to accept it and accept that some/most people won’t like you. Either that or learn to blend in, which is easier said than done with some people. The best I can do is to not speak and hide in a corner, myself.
Maybe it’s my Saturn conjunct Venus in Aquarius in the 12th, conjunct my ASC, but I never, ever fit in with any group, including my own family. If it weren’t for my kids, I wouldn’t even feel like I belong on this planet. My fall came in kindergarten. I was able to do all the puzzles faster than anyone in the class. Some of the kids disliked me for that. I was totally stunned that someone would not like me (I thought everyone liked me). Then to realize they didn’t like me because I was smart, well, that was a total system shock, obviously, because I remember it to this day. That was the start of being completely self-conscious throughout school. I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there.
@Caroline- “I think people are just trained to label and classify. It provides a false sense of comfort in the chaotic world.”
Just want to say, I like the way you think.
I just dare anyone to try to put a label on me. I change with the tides. Then just when you think you might have figured me out, Neptune will jump in and fog the place up and you won’t even recognize me. And for that, I am thankful.
I heard back from her son.. 🙂 Writing him…
Different flavor- mine was never confidence-flavored. But definitely a misfit. Even spent 7th grade in the boiler room w/ two other girls because we didn’t fit in. That year was not all bad. The nuns at that school were nice. We did a lot of singing and made up cheers to the saints.
He remembers me… my family.
Hi XXX, we’re doing well and I hope you’re doing well too. I think of your mother a lot. I think of your whole family but your mother in particular because I used to work in the school office with her.
She was inordinately kind to me. I just wanted to thank her for that and also, let her know that things worked out well for me. I have a happy life! If you could pass this on to her, I’d very much appreciate it. 🙂
Thanks,
Elsa
The message will get through. 🙂
He asked about Henry (he knew him) and my brother who is his age mate.