I was done. Just completely wiped out. Everything felt like a concrete wall I kept running into. I spent weeks just staring at the same old mistakes, the things I lost, the mess I made. The energy was rotten, thick, like old pond water, and it was draining me completely. I tried just ignoring it, working harder, sleeping less, pushing through the wall, but it just kept hanging on like a bad cold that wouldn’t clear up. I wasn’t just sad, I was functionally stuck. Every small decision felt like wading through mud up to my knees. The work projects stalled, the phone calls went unanswered, even the simple act of grocery shopping felt like a huge, impossible burden. I felt that heaviness deep in my chest all the time, a constant anchor dragging me down.
I finally threw my hands up last Tuesday, maybe it was Wednesday, I don’t even remember the exact date anymore because all the days just bled into one another. It was late. After hours of staring at the ceiling and listening to the neighborhood dogs bark, feeling utterly defeated, I grabbed the old deck off the shelf in the corner. I needed something, anything, to break the circuit, to snap me out of the paralyzing loop I was caught in.
The Mess on the Table
I didn’t want a big, complicated reading. I just wanted one card. No spread, no fancy ritual, no lighting incense. Just one card to say what’s next, or what to stop doing. I cut the deck once, twice, felt the cheap cardboard edges under my thumb, and pulled the first one from the top, flipping it over right there on the kitchen counter next to the leftover takeaway box from two nights ago. Five of Cups. Upside down. The Five of Cups Reversed. It just sat there under the harsh kitchen light.
You know the image. Those three spilled cups are what everyone sees first. The sheer focus on the loss, the crying over what’s gone and can’t be recovered. But it was reversed. I just looked at it for a long minute. It felt like the universe had finally gotten fed up and was shouting, “Enough! Stop looking back, you idiot!” It wasn’t about finally appreciating the two upright cups I missed before—I was too blind for that—it was simply about kicking the whole damn mess over, wiping the slate clean, and moving on. The feeling was instant. Not peace, not a massive wave of happy relief, but a sudden, sharp clarity that the grieving and the wallowing period was officially over, whether I liked the verdict or not.
I didn’t pack the deck up. I left that reversed card sitting right there on the counter for three days straight. I needed the visual reminder. It was a physical marker that the past was now literally turned on its head. I had to acknowledge it every time I walked in the room. What did I actually do next? The shift wasn’t big moves; it was just a series of small, grinding changes.
- I stopped calling that one person. You know the one. The one I kept looping back to, trying to fix a thing that was absolutely broken beyond repair, hoping against hope that a different outcome would magically appear if I just tried one more time. That stopped immediately. I didn’t block them, I just stopped initiating contact, and the sudden, heavy silence was deafening, but also clean and final.
- I started tackling the physical environment. I went through the boxes in the garage that I’d been meaning to deal with since last spring and just tossed most of it out. No sentiment, no sorting, just pure garbage bagging things that held old energy, old memories, old hurts. That alone took five hours and left me exhausted but weirdly light.
- I actually finished that online course I signed up for months ago and conveniently forgot about. The final module just needed a day’s serious work, and I’d kept putting it off because I felt too tired and unmotivated. I realized I wasn’t too tired; I was just wallowing in the emotional sludge. Finishing it gave me a little electric buzz, a tiny win I could hold onto.
- I called up old Mike, the guy I’d been ducking for weeks because I owed him an email and a genuine apology for dropping the ball on that project we were doing. I actually picked up the phone and apologized. He didn’t even care much, he’d already hired someone else and moved on, but I desperately needed to do it to close that loop in my own head.
- I changed the route I take home from work. For years I’d driven past that same old coffee shop where everything went south, and every time it was a little pinch of regret. Now? I drive the long way around the park, and I listen to music I actually like.
Where the Good Hit
It wasn’t a huge, dramatic life change, not the kind you see in the movies. It was just a bunch of small, annoying things I finally just put to rest. I wasn’t trying to magically mend the fabric of the past; I was just unburdening the present moment so it could finally breathe again. That reversed five cups was literally saying: The time to mourn is completely done. You did your time. Now get your head up and look at the path ahead.
The new hope thing? It wasn’t a huge surprise promotion or a lottery win. It was simply the removal of the dead weight. Once I cleared out the old stuff, and I mean all of it—the mental baggage, the physical junk, the guilt trips I kept taking—there was suddenly space. Empty space in my head that wasn’t filled with replays of old arguments or what-ifs.
It was like clearing out a nasty, cluttered closet and realizing the room is actually bigger than you thought it was. The real good that the Five of Cups Reversed brought was the sudden, undeniable permission to look forward again, without guilt. I stopped obsessing over the three spilled cups. I finally looked right at the rest of the deck, at the next steps, at the next cards waiting to be pulled. It’s that exact feeling when you finally decide you don’t need to apologize for walking away from something that was only hurting you anymore. It was just me saying, “Right, what’s the next move? What needs to be built now?” and actually meaning it for the first time in months. The misery, the weeks of frustration—it gave me the exact push I needed, forcing the realization that clinging to the failure was the only thing stopping me. I threw that card down and that was the decisive end of the pity party. I closed that sad chapter, literally just closing the book and walking away from the table. That’s what the reversal gave me: the key to unlock the door out of that depressing room and into the air.
I still see the card sometimes in my head, upside down, telling me to keep moving the damn furniture. No turning back now.
