For some reason, Mars has written my life. Those big, crunchy stories: the ones the negativity biases (coded onto our brains by wild and well meaning mammalian ancestors) love to propose as our “deepest selves”. The wounding stories, the ones I confess to my therapists, or to sixth dates, or to trusted diviners chatting charts and omens.
I don't know if this is true for you, but my secrets once glistened with the strange sheen of overproduction. Like an episode of Rupaul, my mind possessed agility in editing the facts and figures to create what it so desperately craved: the fantasy of story, concise meaning.
At some point, perhaps a small devouring of queer theorists and acid later, I moved closer to the comforts of Deconstruction. I stopped desiring a container for myself; I stopped liking words that identified me by kind or attempted to describe me. I stopped coming out; I stopped holding expectations. This was neither liberation nor self-love, though it often felt relieving: it was only a simple sort of shyness - an avoidant response to an undercover overwhelm. I retreated, one day, into the misty world of Not Thinking About That Right Now, but after some years I regained a desire to return to capacity for analysis, self-literacy.
I’m going to tell you some of my tender, hard stories. Perhaps it’s a lot to tell them all at once, but I’ll say only what I can manage. For those in the crowd with hurt, with messy queer coming-of-age dramas of your own, you know to tread carefully here, but I remind you nonetheless. For you Children of Mars, or Lovers of Mars, or Survivors of His Treachery, or whoever you may be, put a hand to your heart and take a breath before you begin. I no longer think my hardships are my deepest self, but they are still feral animals made of memory.
Abandon
Grade 11.
In November of 2007, Mars stood still in Cancer two small degrees from my ascendant. This, perhaps, was my most life-changing retrograde. Before it, I was an angsty teenager dating boys in secret from my parents, dating girls in secret from myself. I questioned my faith and argued with my parents about how long might be a reasonable amount of time to spend on MSN messenger. We argued, of course, about more consequential topics as well. Really, though, it's still hard to discern what might have tipped the timeline in another direction. What could I have done? And them? In retrospect now, there does seem an inevitability to my running away, like if we were all to go back knowing what we do now, it might not happen any differently. Despite, of course, efforts to the contrary.
By January, I was living with my high school love in town, knowing they would soon be leaving for college. I had left home quite dramatically, under the cover of night, walking six kilometres or so to the nearest gas station before my date's older brother came in the family minivan to drive me the rest of the way. I remember my father came to get me the next morning, (everyone knew what had happened and where I would be, it was not my first time leaving) and I remember he cried in frustration and pulled me by the arms and fought but, this time, I knew I didn't have to go back.
It wasn't long before my ex moved to the mainland (although there was some glitch with transcripts and they never got into the radiography program) and it was just me, working night shifts at a local pub which I was maybe, technically, somehow old enough to be working at, getting my daily hours of sleep at my school desk, or not at all.
I leveraged my way through that last year of high school: I made up lies for teachers and guidance counsellors as to why I needed extra credit, flex courses. I somehow managed to have extracurricular Dance Dance Revolution cover my grade 10 gym requirement. I skipped and jumped my way toward finishing high school a year early so I could move to the city where my lover was and, of course, where most mall jobs wouldn’t believe I’d graduated high school anyway.
That Mars Retrograde in Cancer, as one might expect, was a definitive turn towards identity and toward my future fate. I ran toward love; toward independence and the hard work that comes with it.
The first time
Six years earlier.
In 2001, Mars stationed retrograde in Sagittarius; Pluto was there too. The Archer is a part of my sky which hits hard, an uncomfortable mirror for me. (Some stereotypes of Sagittarius beings are that we run away from our problems, holding a sense of philosophical superiority… which may or may not be literal in my case.) The story of this transit doesn't write easily: it’s been told many times by many mouths, mostly in dining rooms and church offices, and never much to my satisfaction. It brings up some sort of misplaced mythical reverence in me - an inescapable, messy preciousness!
My mother was pregnant with twins. It was her sixth pregnancy, and her fifth had been birthed through caesarean. She was prescribed complete bed rest for much of the later trimesters. My father was away for the salmon fishing season, which began in Spring and continued through ‘til Fall. With five children in the house and no parents on hand, an arrangement had to be made for our welfare through the church.
There was a family; a strict godly family of farmhands who had happened upon hard times. They had many children themselves, and I remember the kids having a mean streak, even before all of this. I once slept over at their house years before while my mother had surgery, and the daughters found it funny to lock me places, tell me lies, and get me to do their chores in secret. The parents had recently begun running Christian summer camps for children with disabilities, and the church was very concerned for their lack of fortune and what it might mean for their virtuous ministry. It was convenient, then, to match the good family with nowhere to live with the five children in a house with no parents.
Much happened those few months, and my young mind garbled the priorities when committing things to memory. I remember, for example, they insisted we feed our outdoor cat in the morning, even when I knew the crows would eat it all before she came for her evening visit to us. I remember the father had the palest blue eyes, which he said were caused by his colour blindness. But I remember, too, he would carry my crying, toddling brother around by the ears toward various chores of seemingly desperate importance, and he would yell.
But mostly, they left us much too alone in that house. They had found another place to live; somehow, a house-sit with lake access, without any children attached. They didn’t tell my parents they were leaving us alone; I don’t know why, perhaps a combination of fear and convenience. Out of some necessity of guilt, though, they left their young daughter to watch over us. She was only eleven, not nearly capable of the responsibility. I was nine.
She was mean, but of course I pity her now as an adult. She manipulated, but of course now I understand why. She stole things from us, our saved up money or whatever candies and toys, and told us legitimately terrifying ghost stories at night to explain their probable whereabouts.
It was a hot year. I was always dehydrated and I licked my lips constantly, so much that all around my mouth were inflamed sores. She took Tabasco and rubbed it on my face thinking the spice would deter my bad habit. She didn't think through the consequences of hot sauce in an open wound, and she didn't have the humility to stop when she realized her error.
It was with her I shared my first queer experiences, although I would not call it an awakening. This is where, historically at least, Narrative takes the reins and overproduction starts to seep in. I don’t know, honestly, how I felt about these experiences at the time. I know I wanted her to like me, I cried about her all the time. I do know how many other people in my life felt about it: the parents, the church; it is through their eyes, more than mine, this became such an origin story.
A romantic notion
Fifteen years later.
Mars’ cycle is an uneven one, and its retrogrades return to the same sign every fifteen to seventeen years. The next time Mars neared its opposition with the Sun in Sagittarius, the retrograde station was on the degree of my natal Sun, in Spring 2016.
This is the springtime I proposed to Avery, the longest love of my life. We had been together just a year then, and in that time I’d wiggled away from my then-lifetime opposition to marriage. I’d learned she found it romantic, and at some point I made a joke to her about proposing with devilled eggs like we lived in Harvest Moon. I didn’t do that: I dressed up and prepared a picnic, and we built a cutesy pillow palace together complete with candles and lights. When I asked her to marry me, I felt faint. She said “Yes”, and I said “I think I need to lay down” at the same time, and so we fell slowly sideways into our blanket fort and smiled wide with our eyes closed, holding each other.
There’s a cute and tragic piece of advice in astrology circles to us luminary-ruled risings (my Cancer to her Leo): that we shouldn’t get married before our thirties. Some shard of fate might conspire against us, Saturn scowling upon the fitful fancies of the young…
I did let her down, in this case. We’re still together now, arguably stronger than ever. Sturdy and much less wiley than we once were, but not married. The story of our not-wedding is a strange one, full of forest fires and curses, friends and foes. Ultimately, I was ready in so many ways: for love, definitely, but even for commitment, for thick and thin. The things I wasn’t ready for were the clipboards, the task management, and the resolve - I turned out to be a terribly incompetent event planner, letting deadlines wash over me as I focused on more (seemingly) urgent matters. I solved housing crises, I babysat for friends in need, I waded through polycules of exes with vendettas, but I didn’t get the invitations sent out on time, or the park permit booked, or the dresses sewn, or much of anything. I have compassion for my past self. There truly was much out of my control. Having matured some, though, (and worked as a community organizer who came to host events on the regular) my pity is often slight.
I once sent these charts into the Astrology Hotline, a podcast run by sweethearts and nerds (who I quite like) under clever, very sneaky pseudonyms. My times were off by small margins, but the meanings came through. They said the proposal was more significant for me (it was) and the wedding falling through was harder on her (it was). They called the events a Comedy of Mars.
Looking back, I feel an endearment for the queer chaos. I still want the darling ceremony we delicately planned together (for dreaming was never my weakness)! We had invented roles: an elder of family, an elder of community, someone to help us remember our vows through hard times. Although fate intervened, I still soften at the thought of it all.
I’ve recently discovered a small document from the time, miraculously timestamped:
May 29, 2016 / 4:21pm / Vancouver, BC
handfasting
for as long as this love shall last
not super performative, interactive with guests (alternative seating?)
bare feet :3circular seating, no aisle
meeting each other in the middle
different people have roles: vow keeping, pep talk, spellbinding, witness, metamours?
each act punctuated by adornmentgrow wedding garden of harvest foods
participate in the creation of avery’s outfit somehow, honouring & supporting eachother through the experiencetwo little buns hairstyle, simple uncinched dress
made by hand: makeup made from flowers or somethin
actual real flowers
Abandon, again
Six years later.
In 2022, Mars stationed retrograde in Gemini. I’m not sure if this is the return of my “running away from home” cycle, being 15 years later, or if it will be the next one in which Mars retrogrades from Leo to Cancer. I’ll have to learn the mathematics of it, but either way, I’ve run away plenty in between.
This one brought you’ll-laugh-at-this-one-day situations as we prepared for an out-of-province move. I felt the shadow as Mars opposed everything leading up to the big day. Our water pressure mysteriously dropped to almost non-existent, our septic tank was revealed to be in an insidious state of disrepair underground, and tragically (though not unexpectedly) my grandmother passed away from her decade-long affliction of vascular dementia. I rubbed my hands raw from cleaning fluids, I dug through trenches of excrement, and I wept bitter tears of loss. One might say I was experiencing “literal manifestations”.
This past Mars retrograde has also been life changing: the process of selling a house was a nightmare, and buying a new one, a whirlwind. I can’t help but remember my just-turned-16-year-old self who had called the Kids Help Phone to ask when the legal age was that the police couldn’t bring me back home anymore, and the excitement I felt when I heard it had come. No matter the difficulties, I know deeply now that I am free. I left my last home in part to leave behind the density of libertarianism that was forming in my community, but more so to simply continue forward, to exercise my will. How grateful I am for the strange turns of fortune that brought, this year, my name onto a deed when I’d previously thought such a thing unthinkable. (My last house was not legally mine.) How a young runaway punk can eventually find stability despite, of course, my efforts to the contrary.
The day of the station, it was Hallowe’en night. It was pouring, pouring, pouring rain, we were drenched. Clover dressed as a wolf, and Lou as a pirate, and we wandered around a darkened town. Hardly anyone had their lights on, and the fireworks wouldn’t light, and then we rushed home toward a haphazard slumber, and then the next day: gone. Driving, driving, faraway home.