presence

You are extremely sensitive to your environment.

Recently, I felt the grief of a friend, and I felt it deeply. I excused myself from the people around me, went back to my room and cried for a loss I never had. I thought, is this crazy, am I crazy, for feeling this intensely? And the next day, I met my mentor for lunch and listened to how he is still trying to please his father, in his fifties, and I realized he too feels deeply and he told me, “that’s what makes us writers” and I thought, OK.

Others tend to see whatever they want to see in you, and you thus can come across very differently to different people! You might encourage this, even without knowing. Your appearance and mannerisms tend to be chameleon-like.

Years ago, I read, “Never judge anyone by another’s opinions. We all have different sides that we show to different people” from Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls. I wrote it down, and since I’ve kept it on my desk.

As years go on and I discover who I am by discovering who I’m not, I want to hear less and less about people. What I mean is that I want to talk to the person I’m with about him/her, not about people we know. I don’t want to gossip. I want to be present where I am, with who I’m with.

I have never regretted being present in the moment. I certainly don’t regret dancing weirdly at a concert or buying homemade ornaments at a craft fair or saying “I love you” when I first recognized it.

But I do wonder what my funeral will be like one day, all these people who knew me meeting other people who knew me, now all of them thinking they didn’t know me at all, when really, they all just knew me differently. 

*Italicized quotes are from my natal chart.
  If you know what time you were born at, read yours for funsies here