I grab for my phone like I normally do, then put it back. I don’t want to look at texts from Bo or texts from my dad or texts from Thomas, laughing at my Oedipal tragedy. I don’t want to tell Cinnamon, my first friend I’ve ever liked, that I fucked my brother.

Instead, I write. Vice emailed me a few days ago indicating that they wanted my article: “Why Astrology Is Bullshit: From a Professional Astrologer.” And I’ve never felt more passionately about the thesis than at this moment. After all, I fell for Bo because of his birth chart, because he was “exalted.” I thought sleeping with him would save me, but instead it ruined me. It ruined me beyond what I previously thought possible.

I open a Google Doc and start typing. I think of a Susan Sontag quote I saw the other day on Instagram: “I go to my typewriter as I might go to my machine gun.” The words come out quickly, intensely, like bullets.

Inside of every person is a thousand different people. Think of someone you know well. Are they not filled with contradictory personality traits? To quote the renowned poet Walt Whitman (Gemini), “Do I contradict myself? … I contain multitudes.” To quote myself, a millennial astrologer, “Do I contradict myself? All fucking day.” Astrology accounts for these contradictions, which in part endeared me to it. Everyone has various signs in various planets and houses, which account for the personality wars within all of us. We have our sun, which represents our ego and vitality. Our moon placement governs our emotional attachments. Mercury represents our thinking and communication style. And so on. These placements within one person are often totally at odds. My sun, for example, is in Scorpio, which makes me emotionally intense and strong-willed. My moon, however, is in Gemini, which makes me fickle and flighty. Due to these placements, both of these people exist within me.

But don’t they exist within all of us?

When you think about the various signs, they all stand for universal traits. Take, for example, this description of Taurus I found online: “Taurus is known for its will of iron. But it is also the most relaxed of the earth signs.” So both a relaxed Taurus and a rigid Taurus could read this and say, “it me!” All the sign and house descriptions are like this. They are purposefully conceptualized to apply to everyone.

Let’s go down the list.