When the world shut down during COVID and we were locked inside our homes, aching for a sense of normalcy, I signed up for a 21-day zodiac course. I thought maybe — just maybe — I could learn how to box people up, decode them through sun signs, and make sense of the chaos through constellations. What started as curiosity quickly became a lifeline.

I didn’t know it then, but that little course would spiral into a year-long obsession — not just with astrology, but with needing answers when everything in my life was shifting.

Because outside of that course, life was unraveling.

I had just moved continents. Left behind my family, my friends, the familiar sounds and smells of home — all in search of something “greater.” But nothing quite prepares you for the echo of your own loneliness when you’re out of the safe, protected cage of everything you once knew.

And then, I met him.

He showed up like a thrill — a sweet-talking escape wrapped in unkept promises and late-night texts. He felt like freedom, and I wanted that more than I wanted sense. There was something sinister beneath it all, but I flew too close anyway, chasing the high of being wanted, chosen, desired.

They say when you meet the devil, the least you could do is show up armed.

I didn’t.

So when he crushed my heart — carelessly, almost laughingly, my rage didn’t know where to go.

It turned into denial.
Into hope.
Into spiritual gymnastics.

I shuffled tarot cards like they could save me. I watched angel numbers like a hawk. I begged the moon for signs and googled our birth charts until 3 a.m. I was so desperate to make sense of why it ended, that I tried to find cosmic proof that we were meant to be — and that he’d come back.

Why, you ask?

Because the heart — oh, the heart — is a reckless little thing.
It wants what it shouldn’t.
It confuses pain with passion.
It calls chaos “chemistry.”

And mine? Mine was grieving something I never really had. A fantasy. A future I built out of fragments and flirtations.

But here’s what I know now:
No sign from the universe was going to make someone stay who never saw my worth.
The signs weren’t broken.
I was just asking the wrong questions.

And maybe… just maybe, the real sign was the silence that followed. The aching quiet where I was forced to face myself — no stars, no cards, no him. Just me.

But something shifted when the signs stopped speaking — or maybe when I stopped bending them into the answers I wanted.

I got tired.

Tired of asking the universe to bring back someone who only took.
Tired of waking up and checking the horoscope before checking in with myself.
Tired of pretending that a card pull could undo the reality I refused to face.

So I stopped trying to decode everything.
I stopped asking, “Will he come back?” and started asking, “What do I need to come back to myself?”

And that was the real beginning of my spiritual awakening — not the part with the candles and rituals, but the part where I let myself be human. Confused. Broken. Healing.

Spirituality became less about controlling outcomes and more about surrender. Less about finding signs and more about finding stillness.

I still believe in the magic of the universe — but now, I don’t ask it to prove itself to me.
Now, I ask it to walk beside me, quietly, as I learn to trust my own voice again.

Spirituality no longer feels like reaching outward.
It feels like coming home.

And I think that’s the lesson I was meant to learn all along:

The signs were never outside of me.
I was the sign.
I was always the sign.

If you’re reading this…

… and you’re still looking for a sign — I want to offer you this truth:

You are not crazy for wanting love.
You are not weak for missing someone who hurt you.
And you are not broken for believing in signs.

But sometimes, the most powerful sign of all is the one that says no.
You don’t need a sign from the universe.
You are the sign.

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If this spoke to your heart…

Leave a comment below if you’ve ever looked for answers outside of yourself.