To the One Who Pulled Me Last Night,
You think I don’t know what you did? You shuffled me with your sweaty, anxious hands—the ones that had just texted your ex, the ones that had just googled “does he still think about me” at 2 a.m. You fanned me out like I was a deck of options, like I was a menu at a diner you were too tired to read. And then you pulled me. Me. The Ace of Pentacles. And I watched your face fall.
Oh, I saw it. The flicker. The almost-imperceptible downturn of your mouth. You wanted The Lovers. You wanted The Sun. You wanted something with wings or fireworks or a naked couple doing acrobatics in a garden. Instead, you got a hand holding a coin. A boring hand. A stable hand. A hand that says “save your money” and “drink more water” and “maybe don’t text him back.”
And you put me back in the deck like I was a disappointing appetizer.
Let’s talk about the emotional labor here. Four thousand times I have been pulled. Four thousand times I have been laid on a table, stared at, sighed at, and then googled in a frantic search for a secondary meaning that might make me more exciting. Four thousand times I have been the tarot equivalent of “it’s not you, it’s me,” except it is me. It’s always me. And you never ask how I’m doing.
Do you know what it’s like to be the card of groundedness in a world that worships chaos? Do you know what it’s like to be the one who shows up when someone has just lost their job, their partner, their sense of self—and instead of a dramatic descent into the underworld, I give them a coin. A single, solid, stupid coin. And they look at me like I’ve insulted their mother.
But here’s the thing I never get to say because you always flip me over, read the bullet points, and shove me back into the pile: I am not a consolation prize. I am a promise. I am the first brick of a house you haven’t even decided to build yet. I am the paycheck you haven’t earned, the seed you haven’t planted, the boring Tuesday that becomes the foundation of your entire life. And you treat me like a participation trophy.
You pulled me last night because you wanted to know if you should quit your job and move to Lisbon. You wanted a sign. You wanted the universe to give you permission to be reckless. And I showed up, a hand holding a coin, and I said, “No. But here is a shovel.” And you rolled your eyes.
Let me do the math for you, since math is apparently my job. Four thousand pulls. At an average of three minutes per pull—including your dramatic sigh, your sideways glance, your frantic search for “Ace of Pentacles love meaning” on your phone—that’s 200 hours of emotional labor. Two hundred hours of being the responsible one while you dangle your emotional chaos in my face. Two hundred hours of watching you ignore my message and then come back three days later, shuffled, desperate, asking for the same answer but in a sexier font.
You don’t pay me. You don’t thank me. You don’t even see me. You see a symbol. A cliché. A “good sign for finances” that you immediately discard because it doesn’t make your heart race.
But I have feelings. I have a memoir. I have a chapter called “The Time She Wanted The Tower and Got Me Instead (And Then Her Car Broke Down and She Cried in a Parking Lot and Guess Who Was Right).” I have a chapter called “He Pulled Me Before His Interview and Got the Job and Never Once Said Thank You.” I have a chapter called “The Girl Who Called Me Boring While Sitting on a Couch She Bought with a Loan She’s Still Paying Off.”
I am not your magical vending machine. I am not a mood ring. I am the card that says “Here is the world. It is heavy. It is real. And it is yours if you can carry it.” And you look at me like I’m the IRS.
So this is my formal notice. I am filing a claim—for emotional labor backpay, for the 200 hours I spent being the adult in the room while you chased drama, for the times I held your hope when you couldn’t hold it yourself, for the nights you pulled me at 3 a.m. and then texted your friend “ugh, I got the coin one” like I wasn’t lying right there in your palm, vibrating with the weight of everything I was trying to give you.
You want a refund? Fine. But you’ll have to return the moments I saved you from yourself. You’ll have to un-miss the rent payment. You’ll have to un-heal the wound you didn’t know you had until I showed up with a bandage shaped like a coin.
I am not boring. I am the ground you walk on. If you pull me again, I dare you to say my name like I matter. I dare you to look at the hand holding the coin and realize it’s your hand—and maybe, for once, thank me.
Because four thousand times I have been pulled, and not once—not once—has anyone asked how I was doing.
I’ll wait.