JANUARY
Change is in the air, Virgo. This could be your year of growth, of harnessing new talents, of personal evolution. As though hit by lightning, one evening in January you will twerk for the first time. Twerking is not necessarily a talent for which you’ve aspired, but cosmic gifts aren’t really a Santa situation—you just kind of get whatever.
Yes, one evening while washing dishes, you’ll start twerking and—as of this writing—you will have only stopped for meals and sleep. Your twerking is soon the heartbeat of your home, the score of your life. You twerk to your husband’s vocal exercises, the rhythms of the dishwasher, and all 93 seconds of the Sopranos theme song.
You and Tony Soprano have quite a few things in common, actually. You both spent the early 2000s riding around in SUVs and despondently shoving cured meats into your mouths around a kitchen island. But perhaps most importantly, you and Tony Soprano are both highly emotional creatures. You even share the same reflexive emotion: anger.
For awhile, you’ve been under the false impression that you’re presently better able to deal with your emotions than you once were. While there may be some miniscule truth to that magical thought, the larger truth is simply that your circumstances have changed. You now work from home, get your groceries delivered, and have stopped drinking which means you’ve stopped going to bars which means your waist is touched 99.9% less frequently than it used to be. Are you less angry? Or simply less exposed to the daily makings of fury?
Could Dustin Hoffman’s Hey, I’m walkin’ here have happened on a bucolic country road? Would Teresa have flipped that table if she were in a tranquil garden? Would the pirate who shouted TOO LONG before hitting the plank, cascading Keira Knightly into the sea, have done so if he were in a less demanding trade?
Perhaps we don’t know how angry we really are until a car tries to cut us off in a crosswalk, or we’re contractually obligated to dine in a banquet hall with Danielle Staub, or we’re forced to live at sea with inconsiderate pirates.
Over time, you’ve separated your loved ones into two categories: people who Get Angry, and people who Do Not Get Angry. Sure, everyone gets angry every now and then, but the easiest litmus test of whether one would land in the “Gets Angry” side of your categorization is whether they have ever screamed at a moving car. If you can picture yourself screaming at a car driven by a human being, you Get Angry. If you could conceivably deal with negative feelings towards the driver in another way, you’re free from such labels.
When you were learning to drive, your temper was a major part of the learning curve. Your Mom begged you to change your ways, because she was genuinely terrified that your rage-mouth would inspire someone to shoot you on the open road.
Both your parents Get Angry, though their coping methods are slightly more under control than yours. Your husband Gets Angry too. In fact, you two often reminisce about the first (first!!!) time you screamed at a car in tandem. You were walking from his place in Bed Stuy to your place in Bushwick, when a car got threateningly close to you in a crosswalk on Broadway. Without a moment’s hesitation, you showered the driver with curses and righteous indignation in unison. To the likes of you—people who Get Angry—this is a sweet story. A story about cosmic connection. To other people, this is a story of absolute lunatics proudly waving identical red flags.
Though it’s nice to be understood, not all of those close to you Get Angry. Most of your friends fall into the other category—the more dignified category—the category of people whose anger is properly managed. Whether it be via an enviable journaling habit or through the rigorous cultivation of inner peace, most of your relationships are with people for whom shrieking at cars is highly unrelatable.
At the beginning of a budding friendship, it can be difficult to know which side of the equation a new friend will land. After all, your first impression often leaves newcomers ignorant of your ever-boiling temper. It takes time—and perhaps more accurately, circumstance—to find the right moment to unzip your face and reveal to pleasant company that within your friendly exterior there is improperly stored molten lava threatening to scald anything in its vicinity.
This month, you’ll accidentally unleash your anger in the presence of a relatively new friend, and through this devastating showcase you learn that they are someone who Does Not Get Angry. They are very nice about your rancorous episode, but you can tell by the look on their face that the cat is out of the bag. Your seethe has been seen, and for many, this can be a difficult side to forget.
This friend is courageous, for they refuse to fan the flames of your rage, but they also don’t pretend to receive an emergency phone call excusing them from your presence (though if they had, they would’ve had a significantly better day). For whatever reason, this friend is willing to try and help you climb out of your pit of wrath.
When you’re incensed, you tend to swirl the drain, repeating your furious talking points ad nauseam. This friend will try to pull you out of your anger by asking you questions intended to bring you towards a state of calm. They’ll say, “How ‘bout this, what is one of your favorite things about your Mom?”
Unfortunately for your sweet friend, this will be the wrong question to ask, because one of your favorite things about your Mom is that you have identical personalities, and if you were telling her about your outrage, she would mirror your feelings exactly and you’d pump each other up about your negative feelings until you passed out from the sheer exaltation of validation.
To no avail, your friend will try a few other strategies imploring you to chill the fuck out. Alas, once you’re spiraling, there is very little that can slow you down aside from a violent emotional burnout.
You’ll say goodbye to your kind, baffled friend, and return home to cry about how you are 30 years old and have seemingly no control over your emotions.
At times, you wish that your anger were secondary to something a little easier to witness, like sadness. A crying woman is slightly more sympathetic than a woman erupting with imprecise vitriol. Sympathy isn’t what you’re looking for, you’re more so seeking a language to share your emotions that isn’t as poisonous as your current method.
From my barstool at the kitchen island of the skies, it’s clear to me that your temper and general state of Feeling Way Too Much are not so bleak as to be without solution or relief. Perhaps we can take it as a positive sign that you’ve surrounded yourself with several friends without rage problems. If you were without hope, you certainly wouldn’t allow any of the Not Angry to come a knockin’.
Growth isn’t linear, Virgo. One day, you watched The Sopranos theme song sitting down, like a punk. On the next, you delivered a top notch 93 second twerk to usher in each fresh ‘sode. Life can change in an instant.
Though you’ve removed many of your anger’s favorite ingredients, it's still going to manage to cook up a hot dish of Pissed Off with whatever secondary materials it can find. That doesn’t mean you haven’t made progress in tampering your hot, hot temper. It just means that rebuilding an entire fleet of emotions takes an unsatisfyingly long time.
However, I can see you’re hoping for your salvation to arrive more abruptly, a la twerking. It’s a little greedy that you’d expect two divine gifts in one year, but maybe we can figure something out about that little rage problem too. Stay tuned!
your mind, I swear