Saturn Return: Phase 1

"...destination unknown, invasion like a nervous election...orbiting a 24-track, waiting for saturn to come back..."

So goes a line from my second favorite song from the Erasherheads. I think that if I have a grossly overplayed, oversung, overhummed track, this would be it. And now, as I think about it, it makes for a beautiful soundtrack for my coming 27th birthday (gasp), my shamefully self-proclaimed Saturn Return phase.

In astrology, Saturn Return is a phenomenon wherein a transiting planet Saturn returns to the same point in the sky that it occupied at a moment of a person's birth. It takes roughly 29.5 years for this planet to come full circle, and astrologers believe that at this point, a person crosses over a major threshold and enters the next stage of life. Alright, so I'm not yet 29--but for some reason, I feel that my Saturn is special, and is about to complete its first orbit very soon. Three weeks to be precise. But that's just me trying to manipulate the universe.

So what kind of "crossing over" is necessary for this Saturn Return? It's actually kind of scary when you try to read up on it: giant leap from youth and into adulthood, a staggering awareness of mortality, crossroads, rebirth, change. Words as big as planets in the Milky Way. There's talk about being face-to-face with your greatest fears and having to make your most life-altering decisions. I honestly have no idea how to deal with these things (which brings me to the question of why I even proclaimed this year as my Saturn Return year in the first place). And I don't want to force myself into having that wake-up-call-slash-coming-of-age moment just because people are now expecting me to have a definite life course by the time I'm nearing my 30's. Society seems to have little tolerance for unpredictability, especially for women. Sad but true.

At this age when most of my peers are already married, or are raising children, or having successful careers, there's this huge, invisible question mark constantly looming over my head. Where to? What's next? Sometimes these questions are met with dread, sometimes with anticipation. But always, there is the happy thought that the best is yet to come. That I haven't yet achieved my full potential only hints that better days are coming. And so 27, 28, 29--let those numbers come. I'll hop on the next space rocket to meet Saturn when he flies by.