Conclusion (of sorts) (xiv)

Part XIV
The Triffids: Wide Open Road (1.6MB)

It’d be nice to be able to finish up this little series with a light hearted story about seeing the error of my ways and meeting the love of my life who rode off with me on a white charger… but we all know that’d be crap, don’t we.

There was love and laughter and loss and misery, an on-again off-again relationship that lasted 2 years, a brief passionate affair that made me realise I was worth so much more than I’d been giving myself. And little did I realise it, but I had already met the man I would marry years later. So, obviously the story doesn’t end.

But here’s where I’ll leave it.

I was walking along Manly Corso on a Sunday. I had spent the day enjoying the sun and the tourists, keeping myself occupied. I was lonely, missing Tony terribly, missing Sam (foolish, foolish girl), and wondering if I had it within me to be happy, ever.

As I walked past the shops, I slowed outside the new age shop. I am not one for crystals and the like, but for some reason I really felt like I was being drawn in, like I needed to go inside. I had nothing to lose. I had no answers. I had no direction. I went to the counter and asked if I could have a tarot reading. There was a free spot in 10 minutes, out of a fully booked day. I had no idea what to expect, and the cynic in me was certain I was not going to give anything away. He was going to have to earn his money.

I sat down at a small round wooden table. It had silk embroidered cloth in its centre, and around the edge it had been carved with square slots, which had ornate decorations in and around them. The man sitting opposite me was probably in his early 30s, rather ordinary looking. You certainly wouldn’t have taken him as a tarot reader if you saw him walking down the street. He might well have been a book store assistant in his day job.

He asked me to shuffle the cards, which I did. I then cut them and selected twelve for him. He placed them down on the table, in the carved spots around the perimeter. He stared at them, frowned, shook his head, and collected them up again. Handing them back to me, he said that they weren’t ‘clear’, and he asked me to shuffle, cut, and select twelve again.

When he laid out my second selection of cards, he looked down, frowned and rested his head on his fist, staring at the cards for a while. With a sigh he looked up at me. "These don’t seem to make any sense, but they’ve come up twice, so they must be right." He peered into my face, which was rather disconcerting. "You have the best cards and the worst cards that I have ever seen. And I’ve never seen them combined like this. I can tell that you are really creative. You are, aren’t you." I shrugged. "Well… it seems that there are some very dark things in your life, in your history. Things that you’ve blocked out, that you’ve built a brick wall in front of. But these things are weighing down all this fantastic stuff that I see in these other cards. You could be amazing, but you need to deal with this stuff, you need to break down the wall. And you need to do it with your creativity. Paint it, no… no… you should write it down. That’s where your creativity should be. Write it all down, everything behind that wall, and then burn it. Scatter it in the wind. Sacrifice it. You need to shed these dark things to be free."

I walked out of there feeling shaken, but also feeling like there was now a chance at something better. Did I write it all down and burn it? Nup.

But somehow, twelve years after the tarot reader gave me his advice, I suddenly feel like I’m ready to let this story go to the wind. And I’m really pleased that you were here to say goodbye to it with me.