The one where I had a built-in astrology detector
It may surprise you to hear that an agnostic so solidly against gender identity would have anything to do with astrology at all. Let me just start by saying I know it's not a science. I also don't expect anyone else to believe in it; to me it's just a fun hobby. There is a possibility that something about it actually works, but not for the reasons astrologers claim it works. Kind of like the way people used to say malaria was caused by nighttime bad air (hence the name) and then they found out it was actually a parasite spread by mosquitoes, which are more active at night. They were wrong about the air, but not about the danger coming from the air nor about the dangerous time of day. I feel like if humanity doesn't die out over the next couple hundred years, someone starting out with more money than sense will finally figure out astrology. I won't be here to see that, of course.
But astrology was an obsession of mine back in my woowoo days (you will have read about that in the one about me joining a church), and I learned a lot about it in that time. The only reasons I didn't try to become a professional astrologer were (1) most people will not pay an astrologer when reading their weekly horoscope in the paper tends to scratch that itch, even if it's inadequate and (2) I've never been terribly comfortable with math, even though when I make the effort I do okay at it. And there is a lot of math in astrology. Oh, so much fucking math.
But what I learned sticks with me. And so once in a while I will make a crack about some astrological thing in a larger conversation. I'm sure my terf buddies think it's weird.
But (there I go again) let me tell you about weird astrological coincidences. I'm sure you get tired of me ranting on about gender identity all the time.
First, a bit of background. When we say we were born under the sign of Taurus or Capricorn or what-have-you (I'm a Capricorn, by the way), we're telling one another what our sun sign is. That is, the sign of the Western zodiac that the sun was in the day we were born. It's more complicated than that, but enough to be getting on with. If you used to look up your sign's horoscope in the newspaper, that was your sun sign.
However, that's not the only sign astrologers look at when analyzing you or your life or making predictions about the general course of your life. In astrology the sun and moon are considered planets and so there are ten planets, twelve signs, and twelve houses to reckon with. We'll leave the houses alone because that's just extra complication and this story isn't about them. So you have a Mercury sign (what sign Mercury was in at your birth), a Moon sign (similar concept), a Pluto sign (ditto), and so on.
Relevant to the story I'm telling here, I was born with my Moon in Leo. The moon rules your emotional life and your relationship with your mother and your energy around having children. If you know anything about Leo you know that's not the best place to have your moon located at birth. It... complicates things. I won't say I have a gigantic ego, but I am vulnerable to receiving large bruises to my ego. My favorite astrologer (which isn't saying much; I only gained any real familiarity with three) sums up my moon sign in her introductory book about astrology by referring to people with that moon sign as Big Baby Leo Moon. It's hilarious. Living it isn't really, though. When I say "hilarious" I mean it's laugh or cry. Like a great big baby.
That in mind, on with the story.
I learned about my planetary placements in high school, which was the first time I encountered the book I just mentioned. That knowledge didn't really influence any major relationship decisions I made in life. Some people will only date other people who have sun signs ruled by an element compatible with their own sun sign (e.g., fire with air or earth with water). My sign is an earth sign but I reasoned that even if I wound up with, like, a Gemini or something (Gemini is an air sign), maybe he'd have other planetary placements that evened things out and, of course, what really matters are the choices you make. It's weird to think that learning too much about an irrational thing can make you more rational in the final tally, but that's what happened. About this subject, anyway.
Okay. So. I went into the Army after high school. I had a boyfriend at the time but weird shit happened and I went off the rails and got involved with this Army guy, and he ended up being half the reason my relationship with my boyfriend ended. That was Eddy. I was hung up on him pretty bad at the time and it turned out that my relationship with the high-school boyfriend ending was actually a Good Thing, because High-School Boyfriend was a goddamn knife-obsessed psycho. HSB had hidden the psycho pretty well up to that point because I was young and dumb, but years later he went on to actually pull a knife on his live-in girlfriend at the time. So my messing around with Eddy was one of those what you call pivotal relationships. Even though it wasn't really a relationship. He didn't have partners, he had self-propelled fuckdolls.
Be that as it may. Then, my third year in the Army (I served for two and a half years), I met Mike, the guy I ended up marrying. Now, we were already a thing by the time I got curious about his birth data so I could look up his astrological stuff.
Verdict: Moon in Leo.
Okay, that's weird.
Well, Mike and I married and we had a kiddo and then we had a really bad breakup and my whole life was ruined. This may be familiar to some of you. It's because it's happened more than once.
After the divorce was final I met Matt, the father of my daughter, later that year. After we had carried on for a bit, you guessed it: I asked for his birth data. Unlike Mike's birthday, Matt's birthday fell on a cusp (the day an astrological planet changes signs) and we didn't know his birth time, and so we weren't sure whether he's an Aquarius or a Pisces. His moon, however, was not on a cusp and...
...it was in Leo.
Well, we never married (he did ask, I did accept, but then he went off the rails) but we had a kiddo, and then things limped along for a long time and eventually, when our daughter was almost grown, he made it very clear I wasn't welcome in his life anymore and so I bailed. And here I am with my life ruined again.
But while things were still limping along, before the last time I moved in with him, I was farting around on the internet one day and got a notification from this website that tells you if people are searching for you. An ex of mine had already looked for me there and that was pretty fruitless (I have nothing serious against the guy, but we wouldn't have been compatible and anyway, he married someone else after we broke up), but one day I got a notification from someone else entirely. Commack, New York? I only know one person from New York and he was a Long Islander. Did a bit of googling and what do you know, that's where Commack is. So I did a little more searching and sure enough, it was Eddy. So we got back in touch.
I had never asked Eddy for his astrological stuff back in the day. I knew his birthday was a week after mine and so he was a Capricorn just like me, but that was as far as it went. But we were chatting one night and my mind happened to come around to the idea, and so I asked him.
Guess what.
It absolutely blew my mind that these three men who had played major roles in my life at some point or another all had the same fucking moon sign as I do and I had not been looking for it. With those odds, I should have won the Powerball at least once. (It probably would have helped if I'd ever played in all those years.)
It transpired that if I had somehow gotten into a real relationship with Eddy, likely he would have mistreated me and ruined my life just like the other two Leo Moon men did. I have lots of reasons for believing that, but they're pretty solid reasons, given the evidence I saw over the years.
So at this point I'm afraid to get too attracted to a man again because holy shit, what if we go four for four?
It's a stupid thing to think because I had a few other relationships that were fucking disasters and one of them was an Aquarius moon (he was a triple fucking Aquarius -- sun, moon, and something else major -- in fact and yo, I'm never doing that again either), and with High-School Boyfriend I don't even know what moon sign he was, I just know he was a Cancer (in both senses of the word) and I tend to have love-hate relationships with those. As with the Leo Moon thing, it's never something I look for, it just sort of falls into my lap. So I realize that if I'm right and getting involved again would go to shit, we wouldn't necessarily have the same moon sign. Yep, that's me trying to be rational about an irrational thing again.
But! There's this famous guy I got really into a few years ago and I tell you what, if I didn't look like a troll and if he hadn't gotten married at some point (no one outside his inner circle knows exactly when) and if our paths had ever crossed I would totally jump that... and one day I looked up his birth data.
Sun in Taurus, which I already knew.
Moon in... What the fuck???
Actually, it's on the cusp. If you get the birth time on a cusp placement, you can find out which sign it is for sure. Some astrological organization keeps track of celebrity birth data and they found his. So he is Moon in Cancer. Only just. It was just about to change to Leo.
[whew]
Of course Cancer being the most matronly of the zodiac signs, that supposedly means he's a huge mama's boy, which is going to be just as bad but in another way. So, thank fuck I'm a troll. I don't need that nonsense again.
P.S. Actually? He's 6'6" and his mother is one of his closest relationships: she was one of his biggest cheerleaders when he was developing his acting career. So he is LITERALLY a huge mama's boy. So this is one more example of how astrology sometimes seems to work.
I'm tellin' ya. One day we'll find out why.
It's the goddamn gremlins, right? Why not. Everything else is their fault.