the palm reading

last night sometime around 2 am, motivated by a very bad and emotionally draining week and at least 5 glasses of wine and 3 beers, i stumbled into a tiny psychic shop on 3rd ave. i was all for it, which i never am. i never believe in those things.

my friend anne, a fellow skeptic and very practical lady, came in with me. we were led by a guy we had just met. the psychic did not like his energy and said she wouldn't read his palm. i volunteered mine as he flounced out of the shop.

i'm not sure what i was expecting. maybe just some talk about my lifeline, which is where she began. the whole experience is fuzzy, because of the alcohol and the tears that started to flow uncontrollably from my eyes, but this is what she said, to the best of my memory:

"you are going to live a very long life. you are not going to die from sickness or some sort of incident. but there is something going on in your life. something very significant happened yesterday. and it's the result of something you've been battling for many years. something happened to you four years ago, and everything that has happened to you since then has been a result of that. you have to deal with that. your energy is blocked. it's not your fault, but you have a blockage in your energy. you have to deal with that before you can move on."

of course, she wanted me to pay her $75 to help her unblock me. after a long, intense session, she claimed, she would have a diagnosis about i could clear my chakras. she said god had directed me there that night to learn of my blockage. i wanted to believe her, because i had started to cry. but the skepticism crept in. i paid my $5 -- plus tip -- dried my eyes and went next door to drink some more. (speaking of, how am i alive today?)

so you may be wondering, what happened four years ago? well, at the time (i blame the alcohol) i thought she was referring to a horrible break up i went through during college. however, that occurred seven years ago. i have long felt that karma from that break up has followed me around since, making all of subsequent relationships fail.

however, i guess that's not what she was talking about. here is where my own skepticism creeps in. there is not a direct event i can point to that happened four years ago that would result in something bad happening to me this week. four years ago, i had just graduated from college and moved to new york. having moved back home for a few months, my high school boyfriend -- who had been at the center of that bad break up three years earlier -- wanted to rekindle our relationship. i lead him on. not one of my proudest moments. but when i finally moved to new york, we cut ties and i stopped talking to him. around that same time, i was still desperately in love with my college boyfriend, who i had been seeing on and off. then i started dating someone else -- a relationship that fell apart last year. it was a clusterfuck of feelings and relationships. its not really one specific event, but it was a significant point in my life, and i admit i didn't make all the best choices. i was young, immature, inexperienced.

but could that experience have blocked my energy for the subsequent four years? it's hard to believe that. but ... possible i guess. the question is, if i believe that, if i don't spend $75 to get "unblocked" what else is a girl to do with such a fateful diagnosis?

my takeaway from this whole experience? never get your palm read when you're upset and wasted. you end up much more concerned by the experience than you should.