Creepy Words

No, this isn’t an essay on the word “moist,” but I did get into a conversation about that word on Substack this morning that had me reaching for my literary parka, and now writing this essay. (Does anyone actually know why that word started sending shivers down the spine of everyone in my generation?) But I’m actually interested in discussing more lofty creepy words, which makes me either a word snob or an amateur connoisseur of the heebie-jeebies.

I have recently learned that Neptune is moving into Aires, after traveling through Pisces since 2011. I have zero idea what this means except for what I’m told by moonomens (the real moonomens, not one of the dozens of fake moonomens on social media. The real moonomens is @moonomens or moonomens.com. I’m not advertising for them or involved with them in any way; I am just a stickler for clarification overkill). Anywho, apparently we are at the end of an era, which would sound very dramatic in any context except the context of our current state of affairs, in which literally nothing can sound dramatic anymore because we are numbed by how the dumb have outdumbed themselves, reaching new dimensions of dumbnitude previously glimpsed only when boys on the playground made fartface jokes in the 1980s. Now they’re doing it on Signal.

I digress. Not only has @moonomens announced this transit; they have broken down its significance by astronomical sign (oooooooh). Here’s how mine starts:

“Clear paths became misty during Neptune’s 14-year journey in Pisces. Since 2011, your love of straight answers met a fog that couldn’t be mapped. What challenge could be greater for a truth-seeker?”

Okay, while I agree that is completely generic and general, it was January of 2011 that I had to file for divorce, after discovering my husband had been systematically and pathologically lying to me. That isn’t all he did (trust me, he worked hard to earn his divorce), but I’ve never tolerated habitual lying. As a psychiatrist I understand why people do it, but personally I want to live as authentically as I can, and be loved as authentically as possible, so creating massive webs of lies isn’t my jam. For someone raised in a church where divorce wasn’t an option, for someone married to an ordained Presbyterian minister, the revelations that poured into my life during that divorce actually did fog my life’s map. But this is coincidental, not creepy. The creepy part is hidden in the following sentence:

“Yet in this uncertainty, you found wisdom beyond facts: truths that can only be felt, not proven.”

Wait. Why is that phrase so…familiar?

On January 18, 2025, in my very first post on Substack, I wrote a description of what I intended my newsletter Pajamas and Pearls to be. I thought this would go into a welcome email, or be pinned somewhere as an introduction, because I didn’t understand how Substack worked (and still only understand the very basics, due to my lackadaisical—which I thought until this very moment was “laxadaisical”—relationship with technology). My title? Pajamas and Pearls: What happens when you step off the conveyor belt, and seek wisdom beyond facts. That phrase of mine wasn’t thrown together; it was deeply considered.

That’s at least a little eerie, right? My entire journey of the past decade-plus (my “Neptune in Pisces,” if you will), has been a mash-up of blooming where I was planted while desperately wanting change but not seeing how to make changes. I’ve been seeking an atmosphere of clarity in new purpose. The problem was, I was living in my brain, barely tuned into my body’s knowledge. I was afraid of my body’s knowledge. My body had told me to drop out of med school. After all the sacrifices I made to get IN, at a time when there were two thousand applicants for every one spot! Hardly logical. My body got louder and louder: mononucleosis, thyroid disease, breast lump scare, joint pain, GERD, insomnia, always feeling plugged into a light socket.

Did I listen in med school? No. I pushed through. I fought for what I wanted. I got it and eventually realized that being interested in knowledge doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice your very being to practice it. But I sacrificed, and sacrificed, for decades, never coming up for air; three specialty board certifications, hundred-hour work weeks, everything and everyone considered before my own wellbeing. I ignored my well-being, serving as I had been taught to serve: selflessly.

My body warned me I would have to end my marriage, one year before it told me why. The warning came peacefully and beautifully and mournfully, on a small boat in the Indian Ocean, when I realized the discrepancy between how I felt in that moment and how I felt in my daily life was too great to bear. I acknowledged the message, but pushed it aside because I didn’t have cause. I believed I needed cause. One year later, my body’s feeling was so great one night that I couldn’t stop myself from calmly and slowly blurting out to my husband, “You’re lying to me. I don’t know how I know, but I know,” and thirty minutes later I heard his confession (a partial one, at least), and he left. I knew in that moment it was supernatural instinct or direction that caused a great life heartbreak, which served as my salvation.

After my divorce, I needed air. I needed new life, renewal, recalibration. Instead, since California is a no-fault state and my ex sued me for spousal support, I now had to work MORE to pay him so much support for so many years. But this essay isn’t about that kind of creepiness (although for years the sound of his name did make my skin crawl like “moist,” FOR SURE).

The story of how I made my first U-turn and eventually got off the conveyor belt of my medical career lives (or will live) in my essay series on grief and its transformative changes. But I can say this: since leaving medicine my body has felt a lightness it has never before known. In the past few years I’ve learned to start listening to my body and releasing my faithful adherence to “logic only,” and I feel like the relief I experience is the release of decades of urgent messages my body was giving me.

Have you had any “creepy” words in your life? Words of eerie omen, or of prophetic wonder? Please tell me in the comments! Just don’t be moist about it.