My most visible placement is Saturn. I have a dignified Saturn in the first house. That is also my only fixed planet, my only air planet, and my only angular planet. It’s the only planet that people see when they meet me.

I’ve experienced Saturn in the first house as deep shame. I carry shame that isn’t my shame, about the ways in which I have been sexualized and pathologized. I also carry shame that is my shame about how my survival is complicit in capitalism and this shame is a reaction to my existence as a person who lives involved and despite ongoing, real violence.

A lot of this shame has shown up in how I experience the act of being perceived. It’s much easier for me to function in online spaces where I am not seen. The act of physically being seen is hard for me because it feels like something that isn’t supposed to happen to me. For most of my life I was unseen and unheard. When I was a teenager, I covered my face with anything I could find—hair, makeup, or books.

My Sun and Moon are in houses three and six. This keeps me very busy. I experience my exalted Sun in the third house as subcultural because I am not a person who is seen to be included into the violent origin story of the country that I live in. But I’ve always taken up space in subcultures—visual kei, anime, and kpop. My Aries Sun is in the third house. I write prolifically. I never stop writing. I write fiction, pornography, and articles. I write about astrology. I see myself and hear myself when I write.

My Venus shares a sign and house with my Sun and my sensuality is also very textual. Having a Venus in Aries means that you are always putting yourself out into situations that make you deeply afraid. You are always showing your vulnerability before the other person. You experience love as a kind of debasement of self when you look for it from the wrong people, the wrong institutions, and the wrong friends. You experience it as a masochism—a ripping apart of you. This is why Venus in Aries, I think, is a Venus that is in its detriment. It’s a painful Venus and, over the years, I’ve learned to eroticize pain. I want my lovers to hurt me. Pain makes me feel very, very real and very, very alive. It is easier for me to tell myself that I deserve pain than it is for me to tell myself that I deserve pleasure and being given pain is profoundly reassuring.

A lot of people talk about Cancer Moon as a total crybaby but mine is in the sixth house. It’s there with my south node. Both of my parents are north node in Cancer, south node in Cancer people and they are both very controlling. When they immigrated, they dealt with their fears of precarity by controlling me. In the past, in my early twenties, I experienced my Cancer Moon and my Cancer south node as being very clingy. I kept looking for love that wasn’t given to me at home from anyone I could find.

My Cancer Moon in the sixth house deals with the quest for love by doing a lot of unasked for things for other people. Doing these acts of service is not really a love language for me because it’s something that makes me think that I am in control, that I can control when and how love is given or received if I work for it or earn it. As a Cancer Moon, a lot of the service I did was resentful. It kept me from surrendering to love.

The exalted Sun and dignified Moon in my chart are complicated by t-square with the generational planets Uranus and Neptune. I’m trying to define my own sense of intimate belonging and visibility when all of the cultural containers that contain me are changing. Any identity that I find for myself is ultimately something that is in flux and this is good. Identities should not be and never be stagnant. They are being made and remade by our changing affinities to nationality and cultural ownership. I am trying to define myself as a person who has no cultural ownership. My Moon and Saturn are dignified. Issues of community, nationality, and cultural belonging take up a lot of space in my life. They impact how I experience my body.

My Pisces planets are my favorite placements. They’re in my second house, which is ruled by a Jupiter in the eighth and in Virgo. My Mercury is debilitated. When I was a kid, I didn’t talk for a year when I moved to the United States. When I was in elementary school, I went days without saying a word and my throat would close up. No one talked to me. My parents were too busy and my peers were too white. I started reading a book a day when I learned English and didn’t stop until I was in high school.

I’m not good at talking to people. I read all of the time. That’s just a part of how I regulate myself.

And this Jupiter that my Mercury finds itself in reception with—it’s a problematic Jupiter. It’s mean, bitchy, and pretentious. Jupiter in Virgo doesn’t believe what you have to say. It critiques everything. This Jupiter saved me from every white institution that I was a part of. My cynicism gave me a space in which I could keep a buffer between myself and teachers who tried to kick me out of school.

Jupiter is opposed to my Mars which means that I really want to be heard out. It means that I can always turn an argument about one thing into an argument about another thing. My Mars in Pisces loves elusively. It is a sort of wretched Mars that feels as though heartbroken love is the purest form of love. It loves to sabotage itself. It is a perverse Mars. It chooses one thing just to feel the opposite. It wants to be ruined a little. Mars is in a mixed reception with my Venus. I either want to ruin something or to be ruined in love. I believe, sometimes, that I am supposed to be ruined.

These Pisces and Virgo placements are in my second and eighth houses which means that poeticism is something that keeps my sometimes narcissistic attachment to alienation in check. It means that I am often annoyed by poetry and poetic statements. I am annoyed at people who identify as empaths and people who claim to be clairvoyant. I am annoyed at the idea that life is fundamentally supernatural. The idea that life is fundamentally supernatural terrifies me and helps me contextualize my shame.

There’s not a lot of air in my chart and I sometimes feel suffocated. I sometimes suffocate myself because I normalize not moving as security. There is not a lot of earth in my chart and I sometimes forget that I have a body. I forget to eat. I hate having to think about money. I have no idea how much money I make until I freak out about it. I don’t care how much money other people make. I have a lot of fire and water in my chart. I care if people like me and I want attention and validation. I think, sometimes, when I am not doing enough self care, that I should and can anticipate how other people will respond to me.

My north node is in Capricorn in the twelfth house. I am very good at making care (south node in Cancer in the sixth house). I am very good at keeping emotional control in vulnerable moments because vulnerability is comfortable for me. I have to learn to contextualize the care networks that I want to build with the work of abolition. I am not here to build relationships with just anyone. I am here to build care with intentionality and for the purpose of abolishing violent systems. And this collective abolition might ruin the parts of me that I am relieved to see break into pieces.