Typical Sagittariuses go to every single party. They know everyone, at least by face if not name. They are rarely seen running errands but suddenly appear when the party gets started. A typical Sagittarius speaks in slogans and manifestos, not interested in small talk but always committed to big talk.

There’s often a nervousness, a slightly unnerving lack of hesitation, to the way that a Sagittarius might tell you about their decade plans—those big and sprawling utopias that they design and rebuild over and over again in their imaginations. It’s not that there’s a lack of flexibility because Sagittarius is usually willing to change their minds. It’s that there’s always the relentlessness involved.

We often don’t know how to tell whether a Sagittarius is okay or not. This is because some of the things that a typical Sagittarius might do when they are down—partying, traveling, paying for the whole dinner, and designing a business empire—are often things to do when you are doing well.

A lot of the stereotypes of Sagittarius come down to stereotypes around wealth. Having access to mobility, having access to education, having access to choices—these are things that wealth, not income, gives you.

But there are also Sagittarius who have learned their brilliance through the art of making do. These are the Sagittariuses who believe that there is no reason not to imagine all of their friends and family having access to the types of choices that will make them the most free. These are the Sagittariuses who are often burdened with the task of solving the issue of freedom.

There’s a hidden cruelty to the way that we imagine stereotypes of Sagittarius. Because we often think about Sagittarius through stereotypes of an absent patriarch, of a man who everyone wants but is hard to pin down, as a modern day Zeus with big balls and a bigger checkbook, we often imagine Sagittarius as a sign that needs no one. In doing so, we often imagine our relationships to be the things that keep us from complete freedom, as if our freedom depends on our ability to emancipate ourselves from what we do for other people.

There’s the stereotypes of Sagittarius as the person who never shows up for a second date if they can help it, as the person who always leaves their loved ones pining, and as the one who will leave you just for a glimpse of the horizon.

We aren’t always able to tell whether a Sagittarius is okay. We aren’t trained to recognize it for some reason, to distinguish the difference between a quest for freedom and a desperate lurch out of a hole. In my experience, the biggest dreamers are the retail workers, the waitresses, and the warehouse workers. It is easy to fall impressed with the breadth of a Sagittarius vision but it is harder to acknowledge that frustrated wishes for the free hit the hardest. It is hard to acknowledge that a Sagittarius with a vision needs support because an unsupported Sagittarius doesn’t stop dreaming. They merely begin to treat it as indulgence.

If you’re not a stereotypical Sagittarius, maybe you’re not a jetsetting Sagittarius. Maybe you don’t have a lot of free time. Maybe you work six days a week and find yourself doing routine motions most days. Maybe you have big dreams. Maybe you read adventure novels because you can’t stop dreaming. Maybe you are used to treating your dreams as surreal.

Sagittarius wishes on their lucky numbers. They eat their fortune cookies, believing that the wish won’t come true unless the cookie is eaten, and read into the message. They make wishes on their hands and knees on 11:11. Sagittarius approaches every choice as if there is a hidden, fatalistic meaning. On the outside, this looks like splendid imagination and, in many ways, it can function as so. In other ways, this kind of pattern seeking and magical thinking are also symptoms of desire frustrated until it splinters until the real anywhere it can find space.

Maybe you’re a Sagittarius and you’re paranoid about desire. You’re paranoid about the question of whether your dreams will come true or not. You’re afraid that you will be helpless to change the outcome in the same way that you’re afraid you’re helpless to decide whether other people love you or not. You’re afraid that you will have to ask for permission to become the person you want to be.

It’s okay to not be okay when you’re a Sagittarius. It’s okay to look for signs sometimes as long as you remember that hope isn’t a responsibility that you carry alone but through the quality of your relationships. It’s okay to feel like you can’t go anywhere you want to go and be anyone you want to be for the time being while keeping the certainty that you don’t know what life will give you sacred and close to your chest.