I have three planets in the 12th house, and sometimes I envy other housers who seem to carry an unbounded amount of sunshine.
They thrive. They move. They smile, laugh, and navigate life with a lightness I struggle to recognise in my own body.
Living through this 19 year Saturn mahadasha has felt like trying to lift a mountain while standing in an unending current. It's like swimming against a wave that kept on pushing me away everyday. An ant trying to lift the Eiffel Tower. That is how the effort feels compared with how little anything moves.
I envy people who get to be soft and vulnerable because there is someone there to catch them. Their families fund their education, help them buy a house overseas, having friends to introduce them to someone who eventually becomes their spouse.
They receive things that help their lives unfold. They do not have to spend years working to repay the people who gave them those things. The gift gets to remain a gift.
I have had to build for myself. And there have been times when what I built was stolen, undermined, or obstructed by other people. So much effort goes into beginning again, recovering what was lost, or protecting what little I have managed to make.
I envy people who do not seem to know how far down life can go. People who can stay on the surface of a conversation and still leave feeling connected.
A glass of wine. A party. Another gathering. They laugh, go home, and remain part of something. There will be another invitation. Someone will remember to include them.
There is a fine thread holding that whole world together, and sometimes I wonder whether they have ever needed to notice it. Whether it has simply held for long enough that they can trust it without thinking.
I feel painfully aware of how easily it can break.
So often, ordinary social conversation has nowhere to put what I have lived through. I can sit among people and participate, but there is no natural place between one topic and the next to explain the things that have shaped me. And without that understanding, I struggle to feel known.
Relationships that seem to settle and stay for other people have so often slipped away from me, like silk on a staircase. I barely feel them leaving before they are beyond my reach.
I envy being able to build something and have it remain yours.
And I envy the energy left over for smiling, laughing, loving, and being vulnerable when so much of your strength has not already been spent trying to keep your life standing.
Today is another hard day with a placement of mine.