How to Become More of an Asshole | Kristi Wandering Gypsy

Kristi Wandering Gypsy

There’s a whole lot of love and light in the spiritual community.

But how the hell are you supposed to have balance if you only acknowledge one side?

And just recently, someone said something to me I’ve been told before.

I’m too nice.

I need to be more of an asshole.

So I started thinking about who I actually am.

And who I’ve been.

And what the hell happened to the woman who already knew how to be an asshole?

Apparently, that meant going through my whole fucking life.

I was born and raised in Southern California.

You know, one of those places everybody dreamed about moving to,

and then some of them got there and got eaten alive.

Not me.

I grew up in what we jokingly called the slum part of a rich neighborhood in the 70s and 80s. And if you only know me now,

or you look at me and see some little February Pisces and think you’ve got me figured out, you probably don’t.

There have always been layers and layers to me.

I didn’t like high school much.

Still don’t. 😂

It reminded me of the movie Less Than Zero. Groups and groups with subgroups inside those groups. To me it was fake people hanging around with other fake people and then more fake people.

So I figured out pretty early that whole thing wasn’t for me. I took the classes I needed, graduated about a year and a half early and got the fuck out.

Now don’t get that twisted into me sitting home miserable because I hated high school.

Oh hell no.

I was having a great fucking time.

This was Southern California in the 80s. Beaches. Lakes. I water-skied. Mountains.

Snow-skied. Loved fast cars. California didn’t even require motorcycle helmets back then, so there were plenty of those earrings in the wind, hair blowing everywhere, riding on the back of a motorcycle moments.

Most of my friends were guys, so it was pretty much crazy, adventurous shit.

And then there was Sunset in Hollywood.

The Whisky. The Rainbow. Gazzarri’s. Sushi on Sunset.

Then Marilyn’s, the Lot and E Bar in Pasadena.

Wild fucking times. Great times. There are stories. Nights where one thing led to another, people you met completely by chance. 

At this point I could probably write a BOOK.

Maybe one day.

But when I think about all of that now, the places are only part of what stuck with me.

The people did.

The experiences with other people. The friends I made along the way.

Chance coincidences where I met people who are still in my life today.

Outside my circle of friends, everybody thought they knew me too.

Apparently they partied with me.

Some even slept with me.

Funny thing was, I didn’t even have sex until my first serious boyfriend I was around 17.

Whatever...

I let that shit roll off my shoulders.

My real friends knew more of me.

I had friends that were girls, good ones,

but I could count the really close ones on one hand. Most of my friends were guys.

I connected with them better than some of the petty shit women could put you through.

But even the people closest to me didn’t know everything.

Most of them didn’t know about my Gypsy lineage.

My family. My heritage.

That belonged to me.

I grew up being told I was the reincarnation of my aunt who died in her early twenties.

Neat, huh?

Not really.

My child brain couldn’t comprehend what that meant.

I was told I looked like her. Acted like her. That we were almost identical.

That puts some shit in your head when you’re a kid, whether you understand it or not.

As I got older, I didn’t believe I was her reincarnated.

I believed she was one of my guardian angels.

I never knew her.

But I knew her.

If that makes sense.

And she died on a motorcycle.

So when my dad didn’t want me riding motorcycles, there was a damn good reason.

Teenage me didn’t give a shit or care about the reason.

Pretty much every chance I got, I was on one anyway.

Decades later?

I owned and rode my own Ninja crotch rocket.

I’ve had immune disease issues since I was around eight years old too.

Maybe somewhere in all of that is where I got my fuck it, you’ve got one life so go live it .

I was balls to the wall.

Black sheep.

Did what I wanted when I wanted.

And I didn’t necessarily look like the stereotypical punk rock or rock chick either.

I could look completely put together, meaning you would have never known.

But that was the other side of me.

One thing that stayed consistent through all of it was I could be trusted.

My good friends knew that.

But don’t cross me.

I’d beat your ass.

And I got my ass beat a few times too.

That was part of the game.

I was that chick who wanted you to hit me first.

Because once you did, something happened.

Adrenaline...

It would start pumping through me and then I could finish the job on my end.

My dad still remembers me bringing home a guy with the whole skinhead look, piercings everywhere, leather jacket with the name of his band and other punk bands all over it. shocked the shit out of my dad. 

But That was how I did shit.

Put together on the outside didn’t necessarily tell you what you were getting on the inside.

And maybe that’s part of why all those stories about me never bothered me as much as they probably should have.

People were going to think whatever the fuck they wanted anyway.

I knew who I was.

Or at least I was figuring it out.

Things went right. Things went wrong. Things got misunderstood.

Sometimes years later something would wiggle its way back around and suddenly I could see it differently.

There were moments where life would put something in front of me and I’d choose which direction I was going.

Not all right decisions.

But my decisions.

My free will.

Sometime in the late 90s, I was in one of those fight chat rooms. AOL? Yahoo?

Hell, I don’t remember which one anymore.

But you could talk shit, smack talk all you wanted and let the adrenaline flow without actually getting your ass beat.

Somewhere in all that shit talking, I met this guy.

Online...

Which was pretty much unheard of then.

He became my friend.

Someone I could talk to about anything and be a smart-ass with at the same time.

So when we finally decided to meet in person, I was excited.

Now remember, there was no little map on my phone telling me where the hell I was going.

And this man was paging me about a hundred times in a row with number messages.

I was driving through an area about 45 minutes to an hour away from where I lived, so I pulled over to use a payphone and call him.

I had no idea where I was.

I was in Bakersfield.

And there’s a saying about Bakersfield:

Visit on vacation.

Leave on probation...

So that anxiety was all up in this visit.

Later that night, I found out where I’d stopped was on the same street his mother lived.

Coincidence?

When I finally got to meet him,

I looked into his eyes and thought...

Oh shit.

I fucked up.

See, with pretty much everyone I’d met in my life, sober or not,

I always had this feeling they were going to be a page or maybe a few chapters in my book.

I can’t explain it.

I just knew.

But when I looked at him, I couldn’t find the ending.

It was like an infinity sign that just kept looping.

He kept asking me why I would look into his eyes and then look away.

Why I was so nervous.

That’s why.

All I could say was, “Dude. Where the fuck have you been? I knew you were out there, but WTF?”

Apparently he’d been busy.

You know, doing what normal twenty-something guys were doing in the late 90s. 😂

That was the moment.

We’ve been together ever since.

Of course, most of my friends and family were looking at me like...

Wait.

What are you doing?

Slow down.

They all had questions too.

My mom definitely had questions.

The first Christmas we were together, she gave him a huge knife and told him:

“Now don’t chop my little girl into pieces.”

She was serious.

But I knew what I felt.

Then about a year into our relationship,

I found out something else.

Remember the E Bar, the Lot and outside Marilyn’s in Pasadena?

There was this rumor that ran through those hangouts.

Don’t fuck with the guy with the 36-inch Mohawk.

He’ll spit you out.

He’s an asshole.

He gets into fights.

And he’s a hoe.

Well shit. That one I didn’t need anybody to tell me. Every time I saw his ass walking around, there was another girl with him.

Okay.

Mental note.

Don’t fucking look at the hot punk rocker with the tall blue Mohawk.

Which was funny because he was right in my lane.

Totally my type.

But instead of paying attention to what I thought, I listened to everybody else.

Don’t look at him.

Don’t fuck with him.

So about a year into our relationship, guess what I found out?

The blue-Mohawk guy?

That was him.

Are you fucking kidding me? 😂

The guy everybody told me not to fucking look at years earlier was the man I was now head over heels in love with.

Well shit...

Would we still be together if I’d actually met him back then?

Who the hell knows.

I had a lot of growing to do.

So did he.

Probably not.

But looking back now, it was like I got a glimpse of something before I knew what the hell I was looking at.

Cuz I married my best friend.

Between us, we have five kids. They’re 34 to 24 now.

And that infinity sign?

We’re still spinning in our infinity loop.

I’ve lived a few places over the years.

California, of course. Southern California to freaking Bakersfield.

I lived in Louisiana for a while too.

Then David and I moved to North Alabama, where we stayed until late 2024, when we finally settled in the Western North Carolina mountains where we are today.

Pretty much all of our California friends thought we had completely lost our minds when we moved to Alabama.

They would say, “What? Where the fuck are you going?”

But it ended up being a great move for our family and for his career.

About a decade later, my parents and my sister and her family all made the move from Southern California to North Alabama too.

Then 2018 happened.

I lost my mom.

It was a shock.

We had just moved out of the family home we’d been in since 2004, only a few doors down from my parents. After Mom died, we moved again to be closer to my dad. By 2019, we were living with him to help him and so he wasn’t alone.

My mom and dad would have been married 61 years this past August.

Before she died, Mom and I had gotten closer and closer. We had a ton of conversations about things I knew, things I felt, and the stuff in our family that wasn’t always talked about out loud.

She would tell me:

“I know you know stuff. It’s in your blood, Krissy.”

Which is kind of funny because she wasn’t even on the Gypsy side of my family.

She started seeing more of it herself after we lost my grandfather when I was in my 20s. I knew the exact moment. I had this feeling he had passed away.

Then again when her mom, my grandmother, passed. I had felt it the night before.

We also talked a ton about the nightmares I was having before a treatment she was going to have. She said it wasn’t that huge of a thing, but something about it bothered the hell out of me.

She told me, “Nah. Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.”

Later, that treatment became part of what took her down.

After she died, my whole world fell apart on the inside.

And the losses didn’t stop with her.

Later that year I lost my father-in-law and another father figure in our family’s life we called Papa.

Then my mom’s best friend, who had performed our wedding ceremony passed as well.

Four people we loved in about three months.

Meanwhile, life was still happening.

We still had a teenager at home, and she was pretty high up there in the recruiting world for college softball.

We were all wrecked.

But we kept thinking, we need to keep moving.

We felt like we had to.

That grief would eat you up from the inside out.

And sometime after that, I started digging.

If I have this gift, why couldn’t I use it to take care of the people I love?

Know before it happens.

I’m really lucky to still have a 94-year-old aunt and another who will be 100 that I could pick their brains about the old ancestry and Gypsy stuff. There were words and things my grandmother and grandfather had told me when I was little that I didn’t fully understand as a child.

Nor did I really care to pay much attention to it in my 20s.

Back then it was more of a party trick I’d pull out when I felt like it.

And when it got weird?

Which it did.

I stopped.

By my 30s, my kids sure as hell knew about it.

They hated that they couldn’t get things past me. 😂

I always just knew.

In my 50s, I started taking it more seriously.

I took classes. Met people. Heard their stories. Did forums and practiced my abilities. I went deeper into intuition, Tarot, Oracle, numbers, runes, Gypsy cards, regular playing cards and down the rabbit hole of religions.

In all of that, I realized I was doing something I’d probably been doing my whole life.

Patterns.

Common denominators.

Being still enough to hear what I could.

Discernment.

It wasn’t just:

“Oh, I got a trick for you.”

I wanted to understand it.

How did it come in?

What did I feel or see?

How did I know what to trust?

Classes, people, friends, books, all of it helped.

But eventually I had to understand how it worked for me.

The voice I hear.

The inner knowing I feel.

What?

When?

Who?

How?

Do I trust it?

And somewhere underneath all of that was another question.

Who am I?

Around 2021–2022, I started getting into astrology.

It really started because I’d be talking to people who knew astrology and they’d start throwing all this shit out there.

This house. That transit. This planet is doing whatever to that planet.

And I’m sitting there going...

What the fuck are you talking about?

A good friend told me if I was going to get into it, just know it’s a lot.

It’s vast.

And with my writing...

“Start writing your shit down. You’ll forget. Then you can go back and look at it.”

Challenge accepted.

I consider myself pretty smart, and with what my husband does for a career, I can keep up with his ADHD brain and all the technological side of him.

Hell, I built my own website. And not just making it look pretty and putting my shit on it. I wanted to understand what was underneath it too. SEO, GEO, schema, writing code. Taking things apart so I could see the backbone of the whole thing.

I’m still learning.

But I did it myself.

I’m up for a challenge.

So I started taking astrology classes.

And holy shit, they weren’t kidding.

But I find it fascinating. It’s like a blueprint to your soul.

Remember that math back in high school where you had to reverse the problem to make sure you got the same answer?

That’s what astrology reminds me of.

I can take what I was already feeling or seeing and look at the astrology to see if I get the same answer.

That confirmation helps with my confidence.

I’ve been asked, “Are you an astrologer?”

Hell no.

I use astrology.

There are things I’m still learning. If I don’t know something, I research it.

All those little Dots from my intuition I’d been writing down, plus the confirmation I was finding in astrology, eventually became my blog.

People were reaching out asking about the energy or different questions, so instead of answering one person at a time, I started gathering my notes and putting them in one place.

Whoever needs to see it, sees it when they need to.

That’s also why it’s free.

I enjoy writing it.

If I just help one person, I’ve done my job.

I love helping people.

Sometimes too much.

Why does she do that?

The reality is, I am who I say I am.

Hell, I give out free shit all the time.

There was even a point where some of my medium friends, my sisters, would send me portions of the money they earned because I wouldn’t take it myself.

It’s also why I still keep my services low.

Another question I get:

Do I do Lives on social media?

I have.

But I’m not a spotlight person.

I’m more of an Oz-behind-the-scenes kind of girl.

The thought of trying to connect to energy while numerous people are going:

Me!

Over here!

Is he or she cheating on me?!

And meanwhile I’m wondering who the hell is staring at me or whether I have a wild hair growing out of my chin...

Could I?

Probably.

But I know how I work best.

Centered.

My traditions and the things I have around me help keep me there.

Usually when I’ve gone Live, it’s been with other people.

Supporting what they’re doing or because friends nudged me outside my comfort zone.

“You’ll get used to it.”

Will I ever do it again?

Maybe?!?

But I don’t need to do something somebody else’s way just because it works for them.

Remember the girl at the beginning of this story?

The black sheep?

She didn’t disappear.

I’m not just some wishy-washy February Pisces.

Just because I’m nice, I’m not a doormat.

Being nice isn’t weakness.

Being kind doesn’t mean I don’t have boundaries.

There’s a whole-ass chart behind that Pisces. 😂

Cross one of my boundaries and you’ll find out there was a line in the sand.

I’ll give people 50-plus chances sometimes, but you probably won’t know which one I decided was the last one until I’m done.

I expect people to treat me how I treat them.

But if you’re an asshole?

That’s where I go...

Hmm... 🧐

And I’ll cut your ass off.

I’ve actually been told I need to be more of an asshole.

I see that.

Grace and grit.

And I can hear my mom saying it.

She raised strong, independent girls.

It didn’t matter what situation we were in, there was a way to handle yourself.

Use your intellect.

Use tact.

And whatever you do, handle it with grace and grit.

Tell somebody off in a way they might not even realize until hours, days, maybe months later when it finally hits them.

Thoughts become words.

Words become actions.

Actions become habits.

And eventually, all of it becomes part of who we are.

So, sitting here writing this, with only a few stories from my life, I realized two things.

One, I could write a whole fucking book.

I haven’t even scratched the surface.

But two...

People, places, situations, conversations, classes, experiences...

They shape us.

Some we choose.

Some we don’t.

All of them become part of the story.

But after all of that...

I am still the one who gets to say who I am.

You know what?

It’s like a house.

Let’s say you find a house you really love.

You walk in and everything about it screams:

This is it.

It’s you.

But let’s think about this for a minute.

Did you draw the blueprints?

Did you build the house?

Did you paint it?

Did you decorate the inside before you went to look at it?

Is it your style? Like somehow, they knew your style and set the whole thing up before you ever went in for a showing?

What if someone lived there before?

Did it feel lived in?

Were there markings or scuffs on the walls where you could tell other people had been there before you?

Did you see another version of the house unlike the one that was shown to you?

Then there’s the real estate person who showed it to you.

The person who goes in and checks:

Are the bones good?

Is the structure, right?

All these people shaped this home.

Even the people who helped you decide whether or not you were going to buy it.

So, you bought the home.

It’s perfect.

Whose name is on the deed?

All those people who did the things before you ever bought the house?

No.

Whose house is it?

Mine.

And there it is.

You can acknowledge every person who helped build you without handing them the deed.

Who owns you after you acknowledge everyone who helped build you?

I do.

People have known different versions of me.

Some knew the wild one.

Some knew the mom.

The wife.

The psychic.

The friend.

The asshole.

Some people have seen parts of me I probably couldn't see myself at the time.

Some got me right.

Some got me completely fucking wrong.

All of it is part of my story.

I can acknowledge who helped build me.

Who left marks.

Who changed something.

Who taught me something.

Who loved me.

Even who hurt me.

They can all be part of the house.

But I own the house.

My name is on the deed.

Do you know who you are?

I AM.

I know who I am.

Signed... The Asshole

Kristi Wandering Gypsy