It’s no secret that I’ve been stressed out lately. Between school obligations, extracurricular activities, personal relationships and thinking about the future I’ve found myself burned out, especially tonight.

Lucky for me, I have a roommate who not only understands how I’m feeling but also had an idea to change my mindset as I was on the verge of a breakdown; she pulled out her Tarot cards and suggested that she do a reading on me.

Now I’ve never had an official reading done before but it has been something that I have often wondered about. Do they really work? Would my reading be applicable to me specifically or would it be more generalized? I mean, you never know until you try. In the name of curiosity I decided to see what the process was all about as we sat on the hardwood floor of our bedroom and she brought out the cards which were neatly wrapped in a cloth.

She handed me the stack of cards and told me to shuffle them myself because if she shuffled them the outcome could have been different and ultimately effect my reading. I shuffled the deck of cards and handed them back to her, anxious about what was to happen. She laid out all of the cards on the floor in between us and began to do my reading.

The cards were broken up into different groups pertaining to several aspects of my life based on personal traits, home, career, love and future. The first card that she flipped over was called the anchor, which would be the base of the rest of the reading, and it symbolized hope and optimism for the future in the face of adversity. How appropriate. The rest of the results from my reading are listed below.

Personal

My roommate told me that this set of cards indicated that I was overwhelmed (bingo) and needed to take some time for myself in order to gain balance back into my life. So far so good. She said that this set of cards also revealed that I was having internal struggles about some of the choices that I have made but that these problems could be resolved by introspection. I couldn't consciously identify what the choices were that she was referring to, but when is self-reflection ever a bad idea?

Home

According to my roommate, these cards pertain to the environment where I live and the space that I occupy. She said that these cards indicated that my feelings about my current environment are like the tides, as in they go in and out, constantly changing and that if I wanted to see a change in my environment then I would have to enact it myself. She also said that the cards read that I like to keep my area in an organized chaos-type way, which, if you know me, is very true.

Career

These cards indicated that I am passionate and strong in all aspects of my future career goals. They said that there will be struggles along the way in my career path (which I expect in the competitive field of journalism), but that with perseverance I would be able to be successful through my own means. This was reassuring to hear. During this part of the reading, I turned two of the cards to face the same direction as the other two (because that's just how I am) and my roommate smiled and said that it was an interesting thing for me to do because it showed me taking control of my future career endeavors by aligning the cards a certain way. Very interesting, right?

Love

According to my roommate these cards can be interpreted in several different ways; they can describe the person that I am, they can describe the person that I will to be with romantically or they can even describe the people that I have friendships with. These cards indicated that I was working through struggles with people in my life who I am close to and that these struggles will come to an end through my work to fix them or abandon them entirely. The cards also described someone who was independent (which again could be me or could be someone in my life, both of which are applicable I think) but relied on another person to act as a balance in their life.

Future

My cards for this section were much less direct than any of the other sections in that they read very vague messages about times of struggle followed by times of achievement and that again, it would be up to me to make it through struggles with a clear head in order to sort out the things that I needed to do.

My analysis of the situation:

The underlying theme of my reading was that I have will have a large among of control over most of the things that will occur in my future if I find a way to balance my emotions and work persistently towards what I want. After an hour of sitting on the floor of our bedroom, listening to my roommate read about the meaning of my cards and thinking at what the future could hold for me in a more light-hearted way I feel much better about the state of things. I think there is an important lesson to be told from this experience in that sometimes it doesn't hurt to have a little faith, try something new and find something to believe in (even it that just means having a renewed faith in yourself).