When we think about the stereotypical Aquarius—someone who is frighteningly cool, someone who seems to glide over the messy bits of life because they’re interested only in the rational and floaty concepts that seem to wrap around big pieces of us—we tend to forget that Aquarius is just as confused about the practice of living life as the rest of us.

There’s one particular stereotype about Aquarius, which is the stereotype that Aquariuses are rAnDoM, that I don’t actually think most Aquarius Suns will relate to. Aquarius Suns are not random. Aquarius Suns deal with the infinity of the future. Aquarius Suns is a person who deals often with rigidity because they fear feeling frighteningly out of control.

The thing about having a Sun in its detriment is that this is a Sun that doesn’t know how to be. Aquarius Suns are concerned with the future because they think of it as a huge, blank expanse of nothing that no one can possibly predict or control. Aquarius Suns live in an uncertain identity and in an uncertain timeline. They don’t even really believe in time itself, even as they try to structure it, planning endlessly with so many calendars. They have a moment to themselves and remember that we’re just living on a rock racing through space. Aquarius Suns are used to staying alive in a godless world.

There are always certain things—often small and nitpicky things—that an Aquarius Sun is rigid about. A lot of the behaviors that we commonly associate with Virgo, worrying over whether everyone contributed evenly to one food bill or splitting hairs over the RSVP to an event, are more often seen in an Aquarius. This is because the Sun in Aquarius is a Sun that is in alienation, a Sun that feels like it must anticipate little control over the place where it resides.

If you don’t feel like a stereotypical colorful haired, cool attituded, and smartass Aquarius who can take any social situation and thrive, you might not be alone. That Aquarius stereotype of being the person hanging out alongside the wall of every party, watching everyone else dance and have fun—that’s an image of someone who lives with social anxiety and chooses to show up anyway. It’s the image of someone who fears participation, yearns for it, and puts them in the room because they know that they won’t be the only person who feels like a wallflower. It’s someone who has to trust that they will run into people who work to understand who they are.

Intensity is not often associated with an Aquarius because, to be intense, you have to care an embarrassing amount. Stereotypical Aquariuses, for some reason, are not supposed to care. But the Sun in its detriment? A Sun that is trying to figure out becoming without giving a shit about what they end up being? That’s a Sun that cares.

Identity is not cultivated through righteousness. Identity is cultivated through empathy. That’s something that an Aquarius knows very well. They worry over whether they care too much, whether they care too little. However, Aquarius Suns are not self righteous. There’s a stereotype, with Aquarius, that has to do with intellectual moralizing. However, Aquarius Suns are not concerned with moralizing. They’re concerned with the ecstasy of a communal experience.

If you’re not a stereotypical Aquarius, you might care an embarrassing amount. You might care about the little things in life and you might care about big narratives all at once. You might care about the people you know and worry over people you have yet to know. You might care about that person you’ve yet to meet in person but have been texting with for a few weeks, despite all of your friends’ urges to not care so much. If you’re not a stereotypical Aquarius, you might be confused about identity but you might also know, with sureness, that your identity will only reveal itself through care.

Aquarius cares because they’re trying to do something very tricky—they’re trying to believe in their own being without believing in neither identity nor community but only the empathy that lives between.

There’s a severity to Aquarius that people sometimes neglect. If you’re not a stereotypical Aquarius, you might also find yourself in moments where you want to cry because nothing is turning out as expected and you’re left wondering where your desperate need for control comes from. That’s okay. The future is an unwritten thing. It’s a thing that will always be blank. The future is where potential lives and that potential is found when you remember that there are others who care about your future just as much as you worry about ours.

If you’re not a stereotypical Aquarius, you might care endlessly, to the point where it becomes embarrassing or confusing. You might squawk when showing affection and you might wave your hands around.

There’s a certain romantization of the Aquarius—if you are an Aquarius, detriment Sun, the thinking goes, you must be so cool, so avant garde, and so performative in yourself that you must become your performance. But Aquariuses are just people who don’t know who they will be. They’re people who deal with the terror of potential. They’re people who are sometimes incredible leaders, sometimes incredible crybabies, and sometimes just people who are afraid that they will, again, be excluded from the places where they feel themselves.