The heartbreaking truth about Mercury Retrograde is that it’s as close to closure as we’ll ever get

If you’re thinking obsessively about what could’ve been and what once was, it’s probably because Mercury is in retrograde. And when Mercury is in retrograde, we're powerless to its influence.

We get in fights, then we start even bigger fights. We fall asleep in a good mood and wake up feeling like shit. It's like everything is inside out and backwards, and no matter how fast we scramble, we can't get back to normal before another horrible things hits us smack out of nowhere. I feel like I'm going to cry just writing this!

But it doesn't all have to be bad. Actually, most of it shouldn't be. If it is, that means you're doing something wrong. It has to do with attitude. I look forward to Mercury retrogrades, and you should to. But in order to look forward to a Mercury retrograde, you need to understand what this particular retrograde means:

What is mercury in retrograde?

A few times a year, Mercury appears to go backwards. These times are almost always associated with confusion, frustration, and relationship issues, topped off with our inability to externalize trauma. That culminates with us internalizing it instead.

You probably hear people on Twitter tossing around the phrase "Mercury in gatorade," or witness friends blaming their break ups on the poor, misunderstood planet. But that's because more than anything, Mercury’s retrogrades causes all of our plans to go out of whack.

Everything we'd dreamed up for ourselves, everything we'd been looking forward to, and everything we'd been meticulously planning, tossed to the wind.

What does Mercury retrograde mean for me, then?

It means if you're an empathetic person — like if you're emotional in any sense of the word — it hits you harder than anyone. Your default is to listen and to try to understand, but now it's like you can't hear or understand anything. It's all just happening to you, and there's nothing you can do to slow it down or stop it.

When Mercury is in retrograde, you cannot get out of your feelings which you probably have a hard time doing anyway.

So why is that good?

This is one of the only chances you'll get to learn from your mistakes because it’s forcing you to reflect on everything and analyze it.

But hear me out: do not pop back in anyone’s life just because they're acting like they care about you now. They are coming from a place of deep, deep selfishness, and because of the retrograde, you're more susceptible to it than usual. They have (and they will!) continue to use those emotions against you.

But if you can make it through this — if you can get through the retrograde without caving to them — more likely than not, you won't break or cave to them again, because you've cycled through and taken that power back.

This is your closure.

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@TheTab