Turning Thirty Nine

An aura reading, alchemy, another trip around the sun

“Did you get it?”

I’m trying not to blink, sitting perfectly still on a (too) warm leather bench in the back of a crystal shop, my palms pressed firmly against two metal sensors that are shaped like massive silver hands. Everything in the store is iridescent - the tables lined with sparkly raw stones, the chairs draped in white furs, the oracle decks. Amulets are swaying below the air conditioning vent above the windows, catching the light and splashing swirly, erratic rainbows all over the pristine white walls. It is Labor Day - almost the official end of summer - and also, my 39th birthday. I’m in Palm Springs melting in the 110 degree heat, waiting for the polaroid to dry and watching a rainbow bounce in my palm.

Aura readings are not a thing that I personally do very often, though I’m a sucker for the ethereal and am always open to receiving a message. In our 20’s, my friends and I would schlep to Chinatown for them, where they’d take our photo behind a wrinkled black curtain that was jerry-rigged in the center of a jewelry store. The woman doing the reading would point to the color splotches that appeared around our faces, indicating that we were “too stubborn” or “possibly too mean to our moms” before warning us against the varying physical ailments & heartbreak that we’d need to dodge in the future.

My portraits were always blurry blobs, my eyes barely visible in the clouded frame. Once, my (admittedly unstable) friend Ramona emerged from the black curtain with a portrait of her face perfectly exposed and halo’d by an immaculately balanced rainbow in the correct color order - the holy grail of aura portraits. We were all stunned. How did that happen? Where did her darkness go?

✿

After I’d moved out of the craftsman house I shared with my ex-husband (later dubbed "the mausoleum”) & returned from an extended stay in Europe, I rented a room nestled in the foothills, far away enough from my friends that outings were no longer conveniently spontaneous. My remote work allowed me to easily maintain a self-imposed rehab bubble, where I’d settled into a steady routine of work, pilates, long walks on dirt trails, (mostly) sobriety and an endless stream of books to read.

By August, I’d come to appreciate early mornings, had gotten excessively comfortable with solo dinner dates, lost 15 lbs and could finally wake up without flinching when I acknowledged my new reality. I was doing the thing.

This photo is going to be good, I think.

My Aura, September 2024

Ramona is the first person that comes to mind as my reader hands me my polaroid, which she’s tucked into an iridescent envelope that matches the shiny furniture. In my portrait, I am smiling the way one does in a DMV photo - awkward and tense. I don’t read auras, but I can see the heaviness in the red halo that sits on my crown chakra - can feel the deep blue that she points out hovering over my heart.

It’s not what I’d wanted to see.

What I’d wanted was tangible, physical proof that the last 257 days had transformed me into something beautiful, something better, something new. I needed to know that the salt from my sweat and my tears & my mother’s tears and from my swims in various oceans had cleansed me somehow. I wanted absolute confirmation that the grief had finally, officially left my body, had alchemized into some type of spiritual ascension and perfect chakra alignment.

✿

It is weird to inhabit a mausoleum, but I did it for five months. We’d originally fallen in love with it because of the light, which filled every corner with an orange glow at golden hour, sometimes even as it rained. After it transformed from home to tomb, I stopped drawing the curtains altogether and resigned myself to simply remembering what it felt like to be warm.

✿

The aura reader tells me that my life has been chaotic recently (true), that everything I thought was “one way” was actually “the opposite” (true) & that I am closer to finding my purpose than I ever have been before (also true, I hope). She squints and circles back to the blue around my heart - “are you divorced?”

It’s the first time I’m asked the question without wanting to draw the curtains. Instead of the mausoleum, my mind goes straight to my summer - to the scent of the flowers scattered on the hills in Sicily, to warm kisses in Spain, to genuine hugs from an old friend in Greece, back to my body floating in the Mediterranean sea, weightless & warmed by the sun. For a moment I forget about my thirst for an exorcism, for eradication of the tomb, for perfect chakra alignment. The words divorce/darkness/ death blend together in my mind’s eye, the alchemy suddenly palpable.

I nod yes, accepting the light, the rebirth, the reckoning - and smile as I return to the land of the living.