More Cancer Today Than I Was Yesterday

When I walked past this mesmerising London sunset view today, my heart instantly filled with all the feel-good vibes one can imagine. I was fully present in the moment, captivated by the scene built of many little puzzles known to be dear to my soul.

My hand pulled the phone out from my pocket to snap a picture of the scene but it wasn’t really intentional at all. The head did not control the hand movements on the conscious level. What was happening live in front of my eyes just there and then was way too bewitching to allow that.

It was a one of a kind kind of moment. The incredible Snow Moon wouldn’t shine so brightly straight into my soul ever again. The shades of pink and orange illuminating the cityscape wouldn’t trigger that exact same feeling of artistic appreciation on any other day. The ripples on the Thames wouldn’t flow into my heart and mind and soothe me the way they did back then. The birds wouldn’t instill that same sense of freedom into my gut. The vast firmament wouldn’t open up my head in the same manner for a second time.

Standing there, I felt so so far away from the numbers of people flocking around. I was right among them physically but in my own dreamland mentally - like a crab hiding its vulnerable insides with the chitin shell, one would say.

When I was packing my bags in preparation to fly out of the family nest back in 2019, my struggle to decide what to take completely overwhelmed me. Each little item to be found in the treasure mine of my room turned out to be imbued with huge sentimental value, and the realisation they wouldn’t be all coming across the sea with me tore my heart into pieces.

How could I recreate my safe haven in some bare room somewhere in London without all those items?

I felt like I’d been stripped stark naked having to leave so much of who I was behind. Nostalgia creeping upon my soul all too often and robbing me of the joys of a life I’d been longing to taste for so long, I found it hard to adjust at first.

But the gut feeling that had led me to London all the way from a small Polish town eventually claimed a landslide victory.

There was nothing but pure goodness coming from turning into a minimalist. It showed me all the depths of my rich personality that had been hiding under the thick impenetrable layers of nostalgia, routine, clinginess, and love for comfort.

As cliché as it sounds, I finally learnt how to seize the day and be more present rather than dwell on the past - qualities so freeing to the mind and so intoxicatingly new to me.

When my now ex-boyfriend said I came across to him as a very cold and calculated person with no regard for emotions, it shook my, in fact, exceptionally emotional self, right to the core and left a permanent mark on it. I was a vulnerable person underneath after all. I had simply learnt not to show it to the world because the world never understood. A crab hiding in my shell, that’s what I was.

I did know the value of what I was so protective of though.

Accusing me of being emotionless stirred up all that I’d been bottling up for so long and made me explode like a soda shaken vigorously before opening. In no time at all an angry hurt creature replaced the usual warm and compassionate me, and there was no going back.

I left the fight scarred far worse than before though because hurting others was absolutely against my nature.

Not without struggle, I eventually managed to fill the bottle with pure water instead of dangerous fizzy liquid and learnt the gentle flow of living in harmony with my emotions and staying in touch with them.

When I spontaneously decided to travel to Israel with my best friend and stay at a complete stranger’s place there, even those closest to me thought I was a madman. A careless hippie dreaming away with the fairies who puts way too much trust in strangers and pure luck, that’s what their mocking looks seemed to say.

What they couldn’t wrap their heads around was that I never actually trusted anyone at all. My long history of disappointments with people up to that point had taught me to listen only to myself and my gut.

Now, sprinkle that with my now fairly well-developed emotional intelligence, and you’ve got the incredible skill of being able to tell people’s intentions from a brief look at their face.

So no, I didn’t trust others. I trusted myself and my ability to see through people - that’s how the trip proved a success.

When I made London my new home, the pride the city took in its vibrant variety soaked me all the way to the bone and left me glowing like the sun.

My new-found confidence skyrocketed as I finally fell head over heels in love with my curvy body and the amazing things it was capable of - the last missing piece of my self-love puzzle.

Finally perceiving my oddness as a virtue rather than a curse, it also dawned on me I did need people around me if I wanted to reach my full potential. I just needed to ensure the overall environment they created was one of open-mindedness and diversity rather than tradition and judgementality.

When I lay down in my bed tonight and played with the baby kicking around in my pregnant belly, sweet tears of love softly rolled down my cheeks.

In this upside down pandemic world of today, there could be nothing more comforting to my children-loving soul and innate need for nurturing others than knowing I would soon birth a tiny human being to take care of. Being blessed with the chance to bestow all the life wisdom I’ve so carefully gathered so far to a new young soul feels like a gift greatest of all.

A gift that will keep giving as I get to witness that young life grow and develop, soaking up the world through its childlike curiosity and infecting it with its pure joy that overpowers all the bad.

When I scroll to the top and proofread what I’ve written, I cannot help but notice how my mind cares about the way the words go together. With an imaginative head like mine, not only do I require my pieces to convey information but also to paint pictures in the readers’ minds. It’s a form of art to me.

All these whens...

So varied they could pass for a collection of different people’s little memories fairly easily.

And yet they all are but small cut-outs from the timeline of the earthly life of one and the same individual - me. Recounting a unique personal development journey, they also each provide significant insight into how my personality aligns with the Star sign I was born under.

Making a grand entrance into the world on the rainy Monday morning of 17th July 2000, the morning after that month’s Full Moon, it seems I was destined to be a Cancer - the sign ruled by Luna, dominated by Water Elemental, with Monday as its day of the week.

And here I am: Moon-loving, art-sensitive, emotional, nature-connected, water-adoring, crabby, intuitive, a little moody, constantly misunderstood, feminine, nurturing, caring, imaginative...

But at the same time I’m no longer: clingy, nostalgic, tradition-loving, emotionally unstable, vindictive, insecure, conservative, cautious...

Does that make me less Cancer than I used to be? Does it show you can change and “outgrow” your zodiac if you want to? Does it unanimously disprove the validity of star signs? Does it make astrology believable but only suspiciously so?

I personally do not think so.

After all, all my memories and experiences aren’t just lost to me like that. I am not a constant, I keep changing every day - everybody does, and so I am a cumulative sum of all the mes I have been up to this moment. The me right now wouldn’t be standing here if it wasn’t for what I’ve lived through so far.

With each day I live, my personality gets richer and richer, enhanced by the depths of it I get to unravel as life goes on. And the more days I spend on this planet, the more chances I get to grow into my Star sign - whether intentionally so or not. Simple as that.

So will I ever reach the “perfection”of a “true” Cancer? Will I live long enough; will I live richly enough to reach that point?

In a perfect world? Possible, who knows? In the world we live in - perfect only in its imperfections? I doubt it very much.

It would spoil all the fun.

God created the mighty sky and lit up all the stars on it along with bestowing us with the magic of free will and so we’re as unique as we come, and there’s no way to neatly categorise us into boxes - especially if we’re talking such a small number like 12 zodiacs for all the billions of people that live and have lived on earth.

Besides, whoever created the description of my zodiac sign came BEFORE me, not AFTER, so, unless they possessed the ability to look into future and foresee ALL my life with ALL they choices I would make using MY OWN free will, they can’t have taken every aspect of me (and all the other people born and to be born under the sign of Cancer) into account when writing the description.

That being said, zodiac astrology has been around since time immemorial and using the grain of truth it does seem to contain, there’s a lot to be taken from it.

If anything, it can definitely be a great tool to help us stop and think about who we are - reach deeper into our cores, become more in tune, face our dark sides, acknowledge our virtues and look for ways to better ourselves in pursuit of a good life.

And those who claim there isn’t a single thing that corresponds to their zodiac, maybe this is a wake up call to open your eyes a little wider and start living a little richer?