62. The Pain Of Kassandra

Dear London Fire Snake Scorpio,

How horrible it must have been to be the forseer who sees what no one else can see, sees the disaster coming, yet is helpless to prevent it, because no one sees what she does and does not believe her. How horrible that the silly habit of erotion of a woman, of her voice, the gaslighting of her world view erased a population.

I know her pain well, Kassandra’s. Walking the earth and seeing things no one sees, wondering why everyone is blind to what is obvious to me, and what I am not seeing from my side. Andy Grammer sings “Love is the new money” in one of his songs. One of the few songs of his that I cannot relate to and understand. New? Isn’t that the oldest currency in the world? Even neanderthals showed love to their dead.

And so I took a day off the world. I sat on the couch, ate nonstop, and did whatever I wanted. I watched a marathon of romantic comedies. Starting with Sliding Doors, a film I spoke to you about a few letters ago. Then watched, Juliet, naked. I liked it. A more mature, hopeful view on life and love. And finished with Love again. Crying the whole time, for all 3 films. My eyes are so swollen I can barely see the screen lol.

I am sitting there and wallowing with this grieving woman who finds love again, and all I can think is how freaking lucky she is. Two. Not one great love to hold in your heart, but two. Even if one of them is a memory of a passed loved one. How careless, callous people are with love that grants them safety. How easily they take it for granted. As if the universe owes them that — a loving person. Care. Safety.

I never felt safe. Not a day in my life. Sometimes, fucked properly to exhaustion, with the Water Pig Sagitarius I told you about, I could pretend I felt safe for a few hours. But never truly. I don’t remember falling asleep in my mother’s arms, cuddling with my siblings or being picked up by my dad without becoming a joke to the whole family. My dad used to pick me up to bed when I would pretend to fall asleep in front of the TV, as all kids do. And the whole way up him and my mom would crack jokes about how I slept, or how my body looked. Even that beautiful memory is tainted.

Even you. You do not miss it. Even you do not see what my Kassandra eyes see — that all of this is meaningless unless we have someone to hold. Unless we have someone to hold our head in an embrace for just a moment or two in our lives to be that safe space. Even as a memory, one that we can return to. But you, at least, believe my eyes. And by now, reading more than 60 of my letters, I think you start to see it too, don’t you?

I had many relationships. My first boyfriend, and I am not counting the “boyfriends” I had in elementary school, where we did more of treats sharing and soccer playing than anything else, was my neighbour. My best friend, who was also my neighbour, and I sought him out because she had a crush on him. I was 14. He was a very messed-up 16.

After he made clear that he was not interested in her, and she found another boyfriend (and yes, she gave us her blessing), he made a move on me, and I — trained with the “available dick alert” from a young age responded as a “good woman” should, like a well-trained poodle. He was a friend, and I enjoyed talking to him. So when he played hot and cold and kissed me, then felt me up under the tree of my building entrance — I was frozen.

I was assaulted just 2 years before. A story I may tell you one day, but I am not in the mood for it right now, and I used to freeze when anyone would touch me.

But as I said, he was a very messed-up kid. His father was beating his mother and him. His two older siblings were barely home to protect him. And, undiagnosed at the time, he had a raging OCD. He dropped out of high school that year and went completely off the rails. The worst of it was when he called me to his house one day.

He was drunk and kept drinking beer while listening to Prodigy — a band we were both big fans of at the time. His friend was there too. At some point, we ended up in his room. I froze as soon as he locked the door, but I was a scared little mouse and didn’t even protest. He pushed me onto his bed and kissed me, his hands kneading my breasts. I was shaking but mute. At some point, he pushed his blown pants in my face and said, “Quit playing, it’s already hard. Just undress.”

I know. I know what you are going to say. You are going to wonder how someone with a brain gets into a situation like this. Well, that happens when a child is left unprotected. Unprepared. Unsafe and Gaslit. I was so busy pretending to be mature that I didn’t learn to read the signs or trust my gut. A trained poodle, remember? You say open your legs, and that’s what we do.

But I was damn lucky. His friend, who, let’s be honest, never liked me, but was still a decent guy apparently, pulled him off me. It wasn’t very dramatic; he just put a hand on his shoulder, laughing it off, though I saw in his eyes that he was dead serious. “Hey, she’s just a kid. She won’t know what to do with it anyway. Let her go.” He said. The guy above me moved back, thinking about it through the alcohol fumes, and I found my feet — I got up, opened the door and ran without looking back.

Want to hear the best part? Years later, almost 10 years later, when I finished my degree and started working with endangered youth as a therapist, that neighbour (with whom we still hung out as a group as if nothing, of course, for all these years) and I got into a heart-to-heart conversation. We sat on the stones in front of my parents’ house and started talking.

He just finished his high school diploma. He was 26. He said, “I had undiagnosed OCD, and I was in bad shape. You have no idea how bad.” he smirks with a hollow kind of smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “The things I have done. I remember one time I was with a friend, and I was so drunk I don’t even remember who that girl was, but I locked the door…” and on he goes telling that very story from his side. He was sitting there, mortified, heartbroken, and guilt-ridden.

At first, I thought he was being sneaky, and he actually knew that it was me. But then he turned to me and said, “You were always a good friend and a good listener. I know everyone talks to you; you just have that magnetic quality. I never told this story to anyone. It haunts me at night sometimes. I could have raped her. I was about to,” he shudders.

I laughed that semi-hysterical laugh, the one you laugh when your brain cracks a little. But I never told him it was me. What was the point? We were both kids, and we were both hurt. Knowing he just told his biggest shame to the person he almost rape would just hurt him more, and there was nothing he could do to take back the past anyway.

Either way, I was not interested in anything to do with boys after that incident at 14 until I was 18. When I was 16, I was sent to the school psychologist (again, another story for another time), a Fire Rooster Sagittarius who became my mentor and was my therapist in one capacity or another for 17 years. I named my firstborn after his name because that man saved my life.

He knew about the assaults, of course, they were in my file. And I addressed them in a few sentences. He tried to make me talk about them for years, without any success. One day, when I was 18, he got frustrated with my deflections, and he really rarely lost patience with me. The man was a damn saint. “Oxy, we need to talk about this.”

“Why? It doesn’t affect my life. Why waste valuable time on it?” I snapped. “Is that so?” he shoots back in frustration. “Is that why you are the only 18-year-old amongst all your friends who never even went on a date?”

You know me by now. What happens to an Ox pushed? Especially a young and hot-headed one? I see red. And, considering that my friends all lost their virginity at 16 and teased me mercilessly about the “cob webs that your vagina is covered with, break the damn dam!” I definitely saw red. “So it bothers you that I haven’t fucked anyone yet?” I hissed. “Not a problem,” and I stormed out of his office.

That poor man ate so much shit from me in my teen years, lol. He’s a good man. My heart is bleeding for him when I think of him in the warland. I still send him an email on his birthday every year. I didn’t this year… was sick. But I will definitely get back to doing it again.

The letter is getting long.
I think I will continue in another. 
Tomorrow you will read how I solved the problem, lol.
And somehow, I think you already know what I did. 
Wanna guess? 
Love you even down memory lane,
Yours, 
Oxy. 
May 15, 2026

Help me find him: Have you seen this man?