I Blame Aquarius

I Blame Aquarius

My less than stellar track record when it comes to love, luck and happiness have a very simple root cause: I am Aquarian. Yep, I have looked back at every whoops, faux pas, idiotic decision and crashed dream, and after careful examination and soulful root cause analysis, the truth is each was inevitable and I blame Aquarius! First of all, my mother, (hereafter to be referred to as The Empress of Pain, more on this later) was a. Scorpio, believe me that deadly scorpions were not just her astrological sign but her spirit animal. This chubby smiling Aquarian child and The Empress were doomed to be nemesis from the start. Her favourite child was a nice safe Libra swinging this way and that and always landing feet on balanced scales. School was heaven for me, sure, but Catholic academies are not good places for the idealistic Aquarian’s who just can’t take no for an answer. When Chatty Cathy Aquarian’s just can’t help asking questions that challenge the status quo, problems ensure. Like at the school trip, in 4th grade to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Sr. Helen: Young ladies as you can see the painting of Adam and Eve shows how ashamed they are of being naked. After the original sin as you all learned in Catechism Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden. All the people of the world are children of Adam and Eve and their children.

Me: Yes Sister I have a question about that. What happened to them after that?

Sr Helen: They had two sons Cain and Abel, right?

Me: Right, and Cain killed Abel and then they only had one son. So if Cain was the only one left who did he marry?

Sr Helen: Shall we move to the next exhibit ladies?

A nice simple Aries or Capricorn would have just let it go. But nooooo not an Aquarian. My nice polite Pisces classmate, Anne, elbowed my ribs and mouthed “Shut up!” and we all trundled to Italian Sculpture. See? Pisces could read the room and was not plagued by terminal idealism, a quest for knowledge, and an unsinkable fervor to get to the truth. Again I blame Aquarius.

Aquarian devotion to family and friends seems like a positive and is probably benign for a normal person. But combined with my obsessive idealism. It's homicidal. Ladies and gentlemen I give you Exhibit a. Neighborhood bully lying bleeding in slushy snow freezing to death. In fifth grade on the way home from school carrying two heavy book bags through freezing slushy snow with my little sister clutching my sleeve to prevent falling. I was, to say the least, already in a bad mood. Today, like so many other school days, smiling warm lovely moms and dads were parking their cars near the Academy and standing with umbrellas as near to the doorway as possible at dismissal, so their precious daughters would not be touched by a single errant snowflake. It was the day before Christmas holidays and everyone was to empty their desks into their book bags and take everything home. So as I trudged along carrying my bag and my little sisters’ one to boot, the last person on earth I needed to see was Tommy Mchanahee. The meanest bully on our block, famous for picking on littler kids and pissing me off because again idealistically I wondered why he was ever born. Who needed a crap head like this in the world? At age 8...yeah, in fourth grade, the Empress enrolled me early, a story for another day...I had much to learn about the many crapheads that populated the earth and that I would eventually meet. Well in any case, Tommy was my problem that day. He proceeded to menace my little sister with hard packed meteors of icy snow and proceeded to hit her in the face with a particularly painful one. Not fearing a little girl in an Academy uniform (huge mistake) he did not back off when I walked up to him and was surprised when I pummeled him to the ground arm over arm using the heavy book bags to batter his face as I then kneeled on his chest. When I thought he was dead (see what I mean about the homicidal nature of this Aquarian thing) I brushed the snow from my sister and myself and trudged the rest of the way home. He actually was not dead but showed up at the Empress’s office (did I mention she was a pediatrician?) beaten and bloody crying that “big boys had jumped him.” Yeah, no. Again my lack of remorse about this is frightening me now as an adult but is in complete alignment with the characteristics of Aquarians ...I blame Aquarius for the years of therapy Tommy had to endure and his continued psychosis involving Catholic Girl uniforms.

High school and college teemed with opportunities for Aqaurius to lead me down a less than fortuitous path. Aquarians are supposed to be passionate, full of ideas, and love uplifting the underdog. Anyone with a problem, any group that needed an unrelenting advocate, I was their hero...zealot needed. No one else needs to apply, Aquarian here! Selflessness is lauded but frankly a little well placed selfishness is a pretty good idea. In high school, by senior year I had participated, contributed, funded, supported or managed every extra curricular group that existed, tutored other students, and founded new chapters of groups that hadn’t existed. Every bit of it was because either a student or teacher suggested I “could help out” - and my Aquarian predisposition and associated “all or nothing” passion knows not the meaning of moderation ..what is that concept about anyway? I could not be passionate about everything, idealistic to a fault, and be a true Aquarian with moderation. . You can no more be a little bit Aquarian than a little bit pregnant, idealism, is well about ideals, not medicity after all.

College with all its newness and freedom exacerbated my Aquarianism. My astrology makes “can you drop off some posters for the group fighting for A Black History curriculum at the college?” traverse quickly the gap to nearly getting arrested, because as the only Caucasian screaming “white honky history is not enough” I kind of stood out to the cops. Thanks to a quick witted boyfriend at the time (who I was also saving from a confused sexual identity, again another story) who lifted me and threw me onto a trolley I might to this day have an arrest record. Aquarius, I lost one of my favorite hippie clogs that day on the sidewalk, hope you feel good about that!

And then there were the marriages..oh, for the love of Pete, Aquarius, really? So when it comes to marriage, Aquarian’s spouses get a real bargain because schmucks that we are, first we idealistically pick partners who need fixing. Then we commit ourselves in our tiny brains and huge hearts ``for life, no less” and then we respect our spouses' autonomy so we leave them fully free to screw up their lives and ours without oversight. Aquarius! For shame! My first husband, Wally, actually told me and his family seconded that he was “a bit of a loser” - and I married him anyway, no let me correct that, I insisted on marrying him to (yep you get it,) show the world in my idealistic and loyal way his full potential that no one saw, literally no one, but me. With my full fledged Aquarian blinders on, I did everything humanly possible, worked multiple jobs, opened a side business, encouraged and supported him to complete his education, nurtured more ambition, emphasized the importance of personal hygiene and grooming (oh yes, that was a problem too, I was full monty on this one). Quite predictably failed, failed, failed to the surprise of no one, not even Aquarius smirking in the wings. . For any fellow Aquarians out there take my word for it, all your energy and focus applied daily DOES NOT convert a lazy slovenly Virgo into an ambitious groomed successful Aquarian or anything else. The astrological alchemy fails every time...lead into gold would be far easier.

Husband number 2, was perfectly positioned through personality and demeanour to leverage the biggest Aquarian Achilles heel of all, trust. As with husband number 2, Ricki, we will refer to him as Mr Home Shopping Club, he “needed me”. Yes, indeed not in the good ways, but as a sugar mama, an easy mark for the lie-of-the-day and an idiot disciple of his buying mania. MHSC proceeded to drain my checking accounts, savings for children's tuitions, sign me up for loans and credit cards I did not take out and splurge on goodies for his growing number of hangers -on rather than his children. I blame Aquarius for the ridiculous sense of responsibility and ownership I felt for that marriage and even after he pushed us nearly to bankruptcy for the decision to care for him, (a lifelong smoker) as he slowly died of lung cancer. Week after week, dutifully wrote checks for thousands of dollars above what medical insurance paid for his treatment, only to find out he actually screwed the Nanny from Lincoln Nebraska I hired to take care of my kids while I worked 60 hr. weeks and was taking smoke breaks during chemotherapy. Yes, really. See what I mean? Seriously Aquarius..who am I, Job? What did you have planned next for me....frogs, snakes, plague?

Well Aquarius I still blame you for it all. I won’t even read horoscopes any more, but I will give you one thing. You missed screwing up my third marriage. Don’t worry no divorce or death story here; the stars actually may have been sleeping for this one. Remember, I mentioned my nemesis mother, The Empress of Pain? (I am not being mean, she earned this title and kept the championship belt for 97 years, not kidding). The Empress was a Scorpio, born November 8th and one of the worst people that walked the earth, in my life, or ever (People always doubt this. Doubt away. You must live with the monster to know it). Well, when I first met Phil,this sweet very nerdy environmental scientist online, we fell instantly in phone love, talking for 3 or 4 hrs at a time for months before we ever met. When he mentioned his birthday was November 4th, by rights, I should have thrown up and then hung up. But I didn’t. For once being the idealistic Aquarian worked for me, or Aquarius, were you just off the clock at the time? I am not sure how, but the Scorpio who had never married before and the Aquarian divorcee and widow somehow overcame the malignant alignment of the stars, dodging the astrological bullet. It could be that numerologically, as one of my kookiest nuts-and- granola friends advised us quite excitedly…”a person born 2/4 is the same mathematically as a person for 11/4...they both add up to 6”. According to her and other believers of such things, somehow that has some unique greatness attached to it. I don’t know about that. I do know that If Aquarius had anything to do with it, it still took 46 years to get me to my soulmate and best friend. At the minimum, for the very long wait and all the frustration, anxiety, and pain along the way, I blame Aquarius!