If I haven’t mentioned already, I have a Cancer Sun and Cancer Moon. While it’s generally a good thing to have a Sun and Moon in the same sign, I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about what it means to be a Cancer and how I can use it to my advantage, rather than let it become my demise. Most of the time, I’m okay with it. Being a Cancer certainly involves its struggles, as all signs do in some way or another, but it often feels like Cancer struggles are a different kind of difficult than everybody else’s.
My sweet Taurus therapist boyfriend would dismiss this readily and say something like “You shouldn’t want to be somebody different than who you are.”
Or he’d talk about how destructive this kind of thought is psychologically, and is a contributing factor in a downward and depressed state of mind, only lending to increased feelings of sadness and unworthiness.
Well, I guess.
He doesn’t know what being a Cancer is like, though.
Anyway, today I happen to be alright with my mostly chipper Cancerian disposition and am thoroughly enjoying the badass cup of coffee I just brewed on an unexpected Monday off from my lately-hellish job dealing with constant interruptions and trying to work peacefully with a whole bunch of extroverted air signs.
Oh yeah, the point. I knew I was going somewhere with this.
So the other day I read this article written by this Cancer lady and my reaction to this piece scared the crap out of me. I was repulsed by the speaker’s neuroses. Her finicky nature, resistance to change, insistence on certain behaviors, maybe even an arrogance — it all made me cringe. And it was all so succinctly “Cancer.”
Am I this way?
Am I finicky? Particular? Unreasonable in the way I want my space to be and requesting others understand and appreciate how my way of doing things is better than everyone else’s?
Is my vehemently territorial nature actually not quirky and adorable?
I was appalled. How dare this woman out the secrets shy Cancers quietly keep! I felt exposed, uncovered, laid on the slab with no shell to crawl into, no blanket in which to wrap myself completely like a giant burrito.
I thought about it for a while.
I thought about it for a good long while.
Why did this chafe me so badly? What made it so abhorrent?
I still haven’t really figured that out, but I think part of it is the secretive, inward nature of Cancer. We keep lots of things inside and assume that others can’t see these things. I think also there is a feeling that we are the only one like us in the whole world, that our very disposition is utterly different and unique in some way. That we are the only ones plagued by massive mood shifts, inexplicable irritation when the pickle jar lid is left half-off in the refrigerator while simultaneously dealing with intense and overwhelming feelings of sympathy and empathy, like we really are standing in someone else’s shoes.
The surprise of reading something published by someone not too dissimilar from myself caught me off-guard, I think. And in the end, the article was kind of funny and I appreciated the subtle humor and internal thought processes of a quietly stubborn and highly creative individual.
Maybe there’s some envy there, too. Because she’s accomplished and got something published, while I’m sitting in my little hut on the side of a hill swimming in a thousand unfinished projects and getting nothing done, even when I have all the time in the world. Like today.
Anyway, this was not intended to be a Pity Party and I’ve got a lot of coffee still to finish (which I just typed “cofffeee” accidentally, so maybe that’s a sign that another cup is not really necessary).
Back to shopping for makeup online and looking up words on dictionary.com, like “demise” and “abhorrent” and “inexplicably.”
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