Virgo:: Happy Valentine Daze, Virgo! To begin our meditation on romance, let's consider psychologist Carl Jung's words: "People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul." Do you fit that description? Have you ever employed tortured logic to explain to yourself why you're not following your heart's promptings? In the past year, did you take a detour that has led you further and further away from your true home? Are you engaging in evasive measures in order to keep yourself from seeing the open secret about love that's right in front of you? I'm just asking, Virgo, not accusing. Only you know the correct answers.

You know Rob, I hate when you may right. Evasive measures, hmm? That may be one way of putting it. A shrewd way, but a way nonetheless. You still may be right.

I think it's less that I detoured from my heart's true home, and more that I was forced to re-evaluate where that home might actually lie. Sometimes we create such comfortable futures in our muddled heads, and we create them with so much loving detail that we fail to see that the future is mutable. We're so focused on what's to come that we're blinded to the now.

And yeah, there have been days where I've had to remind myself that that carefully-crafted fantasy is no longer my home, days when silent phantoms and what-ifs dance behind my closed eyelids. Days when I secretly wonder what small part of me will always dwell within the walls of that house-- what figure will stand half-seen from the window, keeping a hazy flicker warmed in her open palm?

That's what's been the hardest this year, I'd say-- the realization that my own imagined home has always been an illusion, nothing more. It took my heart a little while to catch up to my head, I'll admit. Real love builds you both up. There will always be squabbles and trials, but if that's all there's left, it's time to re-evalutate. Feelings don't always necessitate what's best. Logic over nostalgia, you see? Choke on it if you have to, press your forhead to the floor. Nothing is real until it becomes, until it is. It's a continual reminder that my path is clear, unmarked, and for good or ill, who knows?

I feel like I'm coming out of a daze, a fog-- it amazes me that those emotions still seem so very close to the surface, but muted somehow. Dulled with time, I suppose. Sunlight as seen through frosted glass.

Keep breathing, I would tell myself, I still tell myself. You are not alone.

And even more to the point, feelings can obscure what's standing right in front of you.

Repetition, repetition, over and again. It helps me to remember.