The C-Word

I have an astrologer who provides me with guidance.* Ordinarily, I am blithely in love with every piece of advice she provides because it's what I want to hear. I hear Adolf Hitler like his briefings filtered like that too.

So I was horrified when I flipped open her monthly scope, and found myself in dreadful disarray:
A relationship renaissance is soon upon you. This may be the deepening of an existing love affair, a this-is-it style new romance or celebrating a joyous commitment. There is no such thing as a casual liaison under the astro-scape now building. It’s intense & meaningful.

I felt like she'd made some kind of terrible mistake. The word "joyous" and "commitment" could not possibly be in the same sentence, and worse, I just could not understand this side-by-side adjective/noun coupling. "Joyous" has always been one of those words you use only a few times in your life on the occasion a close friend or family member miraculously survives childbirth.

Feeling under siege I consulted her book and read the more in-depth October scope. It was worse. Astro-ravings about a romantic encounter that happens only once-in-a-28-yr-cycle, don't fuck it up, this is serious and so on. Poor Hitler. Now I knew what those final moments in the bunker must have been like (minus the shots of arsenic).

When I contemplated who I am dating right now - Rugby - I felt faint. He could not be The One. Or could he? We already have all the ingredients for a marriage - terrible sex. It made sense from that perspective. It couldn't be! I wracked my brains for any other guy I've met or could potentially be involved with. This did not relax me. Sitting in Borders with my head between my knees, sweating uncontrollably and breathing like a suffocating hyena I realised something. There is a new C-word in my life. It doesn't rhyme with "hunt" anymore (I really wore out the shock of saying it on my ex anyway).

Commitment.

Paper bag. Breathe.

Which lead me to the next disturbing conclusion. This reaction could not be normal. My mother would be tearing her hair out in never-to-be-a-grandmother agony if she could see this once only in-Borders performance. Am I a man?

*Guidance really as opposed to raving, hanging off and repeating every word obsession.