Blame it on the Stars
Article by Katie Rowley, art by Katie Kamio
I am a Scorpio Venus. That’s why I am the way I am. Obsessive. Crazy. Consumed by love. Consumed so fully my mind fails to think of anything else. It could take as little as one night, but as soon as I decide to love someone, they become the focus of my twilight fantasies, the focus of my daydreams, the focus of my every waking thought. It’s torture. My goal in life becomes finding out everything about this new subject of my desire. And by everything, I mean everything.
Before I even knew what a star sign was, I knew the way I loved was off. In kindergarten I decided I had a crush on a boy, and I didn’t stop having a crush on him until my family moved me 50 miles away six years later. The boy's name was Mitchell. He played football. He had a West Highland Terrier who knew how to ride a skateboard. In third grade he cried because someone kept bringing up that his name had “hell” in it. And, for all of elementary school I spent my days vying for his attention. When I learned what kissing meant, I told all my friends that he was going to be my first kiss. In my voice-opened password diary, I wrote my first name paired with his last twenty-bajillion times. I could’ve sworn I was gonna marry him. Before I moved, at our school-sanctioned 6th grade carnival, in front of all the boys playing football on the field, I chased him down and confessed my six-year crush on him. I thought, with the newly donned power of our cell phones, we could sustain a long-distance relationship, he would reciprocate the feelings, and we’d go on to be that miraculous couple that had been together since elementary school. Needless to say, he rejected my feelings, and I haven’t seen him since the night of our 6th grade graduation. But I still check up on him, through Instagram and LinkedIn and his college’s varsity football team roster.
In middle school, as I started to learn more about star signs, I ingrained the fact that I was a Virgo into my personality. I had another one of those obsessive crushes. Three days before 8th grade ended, I decided I had a crush on a guy in my friend group. His name was Blake. I spent the next three days spending as much time with him as possible. I’d stand next to him outside during recess and walk with him in the hallways. I found out everything I could about him. His favorite band. What his relationship with his parents was like. Why he wore an old leather jacket every day. On the last day of school, I wore a leather jacket and forced our friends to take a polaroid picture of Blake and I standing next to each other. I got his number and invited him to a Blink-182 concert with me. He declined. I wrote him a letter confessing my feelings, signing it with something cliché like “your secret admirer” or “you’ll know who this is.” This letter was put in our “Letters to Our Future Selves” that our middle school teachers sent to us the summer after we graduated high school. We went to different high schools, and he didn’t even have my number, but half of me expected a text that summer. An acknowledgement that he also felt that intense, obsessive desire for me too.
High school brought about a plethora of these crushes. I sat behind Chris in health class and memorized the curvature of the back of his ears. When he mentioned his favorite band was ACDC, I begged my mom to buy me a t-shirt of theirs so he’d have an excuse to talk to me. Zack liked playing cards and shitty male manipulator music, so I started captioning my Instagram posts with Neck Deep lyrics and buying unique decks of cards I’d hoped to give him as a gift one day. I memorized the license plate of his beige Subaru Outback so I always knew when I saw him driving around town.
Luke pursued me first, but once I had him, I couldn’t let him go. He told me he loved me on our first date; I know it's a red flag, but within a week I felt the same. I loved him. And so, when he asked me to be his girlfriend two weeks after we started talking, I obviously said yes. The culmination of our actual relationship was only three months, but I stayed infatuated with him for two years. Refusing to break off contact. I would add and unadd him on Snapchat. Send him drunk texts and pretend I didn’t know whose number I was texting the next morning. I got over the fact that he cheated on me during our relationship, and ignored the fact that he was talking and keeping things “low-key” with my ex-best friend when we reconnected. I was convinced that I loved him and that we were going to work it out and get married. None of the cruel things he did changed that fact. A week before he got me too high and took advantage of me, I told my mom that I just felt that he was the one. Even if we broke up due to the distance different colleges created, we’d meet in nine years at some bar in Washington D.C., we’d catch up like no time had passed and we’d get married. He was my plan for the future. Now, I drive by his house and flip it off. And my heartbeat spikes with every little red car I see.
Now, I know what you’re thinking, these examples just sound like a young girl experiencing love and the hope of being desired for the first time. But my friends never experienced this all-consuming intense romance. They’d have crushes and still be able to focus on school and not need to know their addresses and not need to do everything for that singular person’s attention. I couldn’t relate. I still can’t.
Your Venus sign rules how you love, how you interact in your relationships, your sex life. You know, just the important things. Scorpio is a water sign, and they’re known for being loyal, turbulent, extreme, dark, passionate, obsessive. Think Lorde or SZA. Give Ctrl and Melodrama a listen, and you’ll understand the Scorpio psyche.
So, having a Scorpio Venus means that, when it comes to love, I cannot help myself from craving everything from the person I’ve decided to love. I cannot help myself from jumping in heart first and declaring love after one night. Which sucks. I tried to enter college with a new mindset: I would be easy to love. I’d be chill when it came to relationships. I’d participate in hookup culture and be able to keep things no-strings-attached. I wouldn’t love too hard. That plan lasted until November 3rd of my freshman year.
When I met Peter for the first time, and he kissed me for the first time, I knew I would stop at nothing to make him mine. I was utterly obsessed with him. I had to talk to him 24/7. I had to know everything about him. So, I spent the next three months in bed with him, savoring every moment, eating up every word he said. My attitude each day of those three months depended on if he texted me or Snapchatted me or made some attempt to communicate in any way. I was obsessed with his attention. I was obsessed with him, and I needed him to be obsessed with me. When I left for college after those three months, the obsession didn’t fade. I still needed him to talk to me, each and every day. I craved the notification with his name. I didn’t care if he was texting me stupid Tiktoks, at least he was sending them to me. And then of course, in May, I learned, solidly and completely, that he was not obsessed with me. My reaction was uncalled for. I freaked. There’s no other way to put it. All the focus and attention I devoted to him poured out in tears on the floor of my dorm room. And then, I got over it. With nine months of not talking to him, my obsession with him dimmed. That’s not true. It just changed shape. I’d try to not spend my days thinking of him. I slept with his best friend as an act of silent revenge. I sobbed over him, drunk and inconsolable, sitting alone outside of my apartment. My intense love for him grew into hurt and pain. It raged inside of me, burning brighter than ever. I had nowhere to place it anymore.
We met again last January. He was girlfriendless again, looking for someone easy to fuck. I was ready to jump back into the obsession. I told myself that I wouldn’t feel that strongly for him again. I told my best friend from high school that I could sleep with him with no strings attached. I told him that I honestly felt the same when he said he could never fathom a relationship with me. But I lied. Ten months later, I was right back where I started freshman year, intensely in love with someone who would never be obsessed with me.
Maybe this Scorpio Venus is just a curse I will have to live with for the rest of my life. I will spend every infatuation for the rest of my life becoming intensely obsessed and will never receive an equal level of desire. Or maybe, I’ll find someone who wants to know what shitty bands I like and my license plate number and my address and my parents’ names. Maybe, I’ll find someone who deserves my obsession.