Yesterday I opened up a fortune cookie to find the message, “The key to failure is trying to please everyone.” Reading this, I was reminded of Chiron, partly because the word “key” is associated with him, and partly because the drive to please others at a person’s own expense is certainly a way to continually re-open a Chirotic wound.  It is impossible to please everyone, and more importantly, unnecessary. Have Chiron in Taurus or Libra (ruled by Venus), the 2nd or 7th Houses? Chiron in aspect to Venus? If so, the self-sacrificing urge to please everyone else even when it makes you miserable to do so may show Chiron at work. If you’re hell bent on failing to heal your own wounds, then surely trying to please everyone is the best way to do so.


    In the Chiron myth we see various instances of Chiron’s martyrdom. He was willing to take punishments handed down to others, to suffer the consequences of other peoples’ actions. Did it ever heal him to do so? It didn’t. The closest to healing that he ever got was to be rewarded with an end to his painful immortality. His wound was never healed. His only gain was to lose himself.

    In a particular friendship lately I’ve found myself also wanting to take on this person’s struggles as my own. Oh, life is hard? Let me lay a cushion for you. Oh, you’re having trouble being self-sufficient? You can just rely on me, then! In any situation like this there eventually has to come a breaking point, and for me and my friend that breaking point just recently arrived. To be taken advantage of is one thing, but to be willingly taken advantage of is another. I have to realize my part in the dysfunction and then discontinue the dysfunctional behavior if I am to move on from it.

This morning on the way to work I heard this excellent song by Warpaint called "Undertow."

What’s the matter? You hurt yourself?
Opened your eyes and there was someone else?
[...]
Why you wanna blame me for your troubles?
Ah ah ah you better learn your lesson yourself.

    The above lyrics sum up exactly how I feel about the conflicts I’ve recently had with my friend. I’ve been her shoulder to cry on when she needed one. Many times I’ve been this for her, and she’s gladly asked me for favors and expected to be coddled like a child all along the way, and stupidly I was glad to do it though I got very little care/concern for my own troubles in return. All of that is slightly annoying, but what I really find fault with is her recent change in behavior towards me. She has been acting out with me lately with passive-aggressive judgmental jabs and bringing up vague references to emotional difficulty and then cattily shutting me out when I express concern.

    I won’t go into the details of it, but it recently came to light that the root of this behavior is basic high-school level insecurity and vindictiveness. She seems to think that I am expendable as a friend because I pose an imagined threat to her “friendship” with her ex-boyfriend. Please note the emphasis on the word "imagined," because I barely know this ex-boyfriend of hers, but he apparently told my friend that he would like to hang out with me and my roommate outside of their own "hang out times" and she was not happy about it. Am I to blame for whatever jealousy was evoked in her by this ex wanting to befriend me? (For the record, I would definitely not have socialized with a friend's ex! That crosses a major girl-code friendship boundary and I would have found the request pretty strange). Apparently she really does think I am to blame though. Really, the neuroses of it all, and the manipulative, catty behavior that accompanies it is too much for me. I can be empathetic to a point, but there is a breaking point in my empathy when it comes to such petty behavior.