A Leo’s Tail

I was born in a ball of fire; hurtling down from the cosmos on a ripe summer day, whose sluggish body drug slowly to noon. I was the first of three children; which, naturally, perplexed my childlike sense of importance from its origins - there is, after all, only one spotlight.

Over the fleeting years I begrudgingly adapted to sharing the toys, the attention, and the affection ladled over us like honey in a pot. But, in typical Leo fashion, I was most content when outshining the others. I committed at an early age to straight As, promptness, and subordination. I owned a watch at six years old so that I could be the first child ready for school every morning, eagerly clutching my binder of check marks, stickers, and smiley faces scrawled across assignments.

It was not enough.

My parents possessed a rather authoritarian style of child-rearing, and seemed to take pride in us only when we filled the ideals of the cookie cutter children they imagined pre-conception. This brought the Scorpio (Moon) within me forward: deeply emotional, moody, and reactive. The celestial bodies within me battled violently. I was ever striving to meet the expectations they dangled above me; yet I also retreated, deeply wounded, with each ‘failure’ I presented before my parents. In eighth grade, I came home with a 94 in Algebra 2. I left for school the next day with an enthusiastic admonishing for bringing home an A-.

Despite the arbitrary tension between myself and my siblings, I took much joy in developing my leadership skills by creating novel games for us to play and delegating the chore chart. This doubly served to scald me as my parents held me accountable not solely for their constant entertainment and general satisfaction, but for their own mishaps. I was dubbed a ‘ringleader’; the elfish commandant of a tagalong band of misfits, and any foul word or disapproved habit my siblings adopted was one I had masterfully taught them.

Slowly, the smoldering fire within me puttered out and a bitterness burned over. By high school I was watching the leads of the school play longingly from the wings of the stage, robed in all black, with the other set hands. I stayed in honors classes but no longer raised my hand, no longer studied. I was late multiple times a week, I wore clothes my parents hated, and my mouth was usually owed a bar of soap.

I made it into college with embers in my heart.

And yet, nature has a funny way of persevering, doesn’t it? No matter how many times you cut it, burn it, rip it from the ground, nature always returns (often, with a vengeance).

Miles away from home, from all that had sought to tame my spirit, I flourished.

I took drama my freshman year of college. I had straight As! I made deep, meaningful friendships easily. I was on time, prepared, bubbly. Buoyant, even. The fire within me grew bold, ostentatious, and charismatic once more.

Maybe you believe in astrology, maybe you don’t. There are a million intricacies that comprise us, an innumerable plethora of factors that contribute to our identities. There are endless coincidences, too, we must remember. Life is constructed largely of patterns, if we’re keen enough to notice them.

So, I mean, hey, I’m not going to chart stars anytime soon, but I’m certainly not going to rule them out either.