Stories from the Sunworld

12 Steps For Self Care

Aries: I envy you. I envy your courage, your stupidity and your childishness. Maybe you’re asking “Why?” Well, wouldn’t it be beautiful if we were all children at heart, like you? Like seeing things so horrible yet still making corny jokes? Like telling your feelings, like running until your feet hurt? Like purity, like innocence mixed with knowledge? You have experienced the world, you have experienced life. And yet, you still stand here. Brave and tall. As if to say “I am not afraid of life. I am not afraid to live.” Taurus: I will always associate you with flowers and colours. With lilies and roses and blood oranges. I will always associate you with fruit and red-green-yellow. We will speak in colours, talk in words others won’t understand. With red-grey sand and blue-green eyes. An encouraging nod, a hug with clasping hands. Words left unspoken simply ‘cause they were never meant to be said, they were meant to be. They were meant to be. Plucking petals like a grade schooler playing games about love. Holding a magnifying glass over your head, and I could not find a flaw. I just saw you. I saw you. Gemini: While you drink in the melodies of everyone’s laughter. The ghosts find a new home inside your body. A facade of performance, masking out true emotions. While the hallways turn vacant and your ghosts shut the doors. The voices leave the room empty, the emptiness in your chest weighing like a brick worth thousands of golden bricks. I cannot put a price on your heart, I don’t know its colours. I don’t know its voice. Or the three albums you have on repeat over the summer, or the songs you dance to at night. Simply because you are you, unique, mysterious and beautiful. Cancer: You are a puzzle and I am not your missing peace, I don’t own it. But you do. You make up your own being. Maybe you left it in your back pocket, next to the shattered dreams or under the pillars you build when you were eight years old. The ones you made to put your broken home on, searching for stability in broken mirrors. I will linger in my map of you and I swear that even when I get back it leads back to you. It always leads back to you. To that little house with orange paint on the walls from ten years ago. With the nicotine sticking to a once white ceiling and some kind of animals running around. The dusty photographs will still stand on the desk. You will still sit on that one spot, with teary eyes and crossed legs. And you will still be beautiful. Leo: I could never describe your beauty. Your beauty cannot be multiplied, it can only be remembered, treasured, envied, appreciated or regretted. And by remembered I mean that when you feel like you are just another extra in someone’s life that they will mention you to their parents during dinner. They will talk about your shining personality and sparkling eyes. By treasured I am talking about that “the one” experience which you deserve. A treasure filled with all things unique and irreplaceable. One that’s filled with happiness. By envied I am talking about the eyes you do not see, or do not wish to see. Or don’t notice. You stand out in a crowd, especially when you don’t think you are. By appreciated I am talking about the ones who see your true you, your tangled hair and cracked lips. The ones who still stay even through the bad times. By regretted I am talking about the people who did not see your beauty until you blossomed. I understand why you find cocoons beautiful now, and how you like caterpillars just as much as butterflies. Virgo: Snow litters on untouched skin. Sun rains through the cracks of the darkness even where you hide. I could hear you talking every day. Forever. With delicate fingers and blushed cheeks. Your hair untamed and your fingers bruised to the bone. Delicately logical. The edges of the leafs of oak trees remind me of your way of thinking. The overhang reminds me of your mind. Which casts shadows over the villagers in the houses you build where colourless souls reside. You are so often in debate with your own head, at war with your own body. Never at peace, always restless. Always asking, “but why?” I don’t know. You like it, don’t you? Parading around in your own world? Sweet little soul in a world full of pain. Libra: The bell of the church echoed through your head a little longer than it should’ve. It never was nice. We never played nice. We talked until our lips were dry and I stayed home when you were out cold. But memories don’t matter anymore do they darling? In this orchestra of harmonious noises where you are the leader of everything nothing can hurt you. I don’t know, I don’t know. And goddamnit I know you will try to push everything on yourself again. You always do. That’s just how you work. Why don’t you warm your hands on your own body for once? You don’t need another person to feel like you’re loved, you only need one. One whole, full, true person. Scorpio: Everything seems darker these days. Charcoal coloured clouds are a daily thing. And your arms are always covered up along with your legs. Even in the summer the nights don’t seem as enchanting. Not when small bruises shaped like the bumps of your knuckles litter on your thighs. Self destructive lullabies, “I just need a friend, for once in my life.” A desire for someone to stay ripped from your lips. So I stayed by your side wondering, if you wanted me to stay or needed me to stay. Of course I could say you remind me of scarlet blood and bathroom tiles. But you also remind of the river I used to play in when I was nine. You also remind me of the necklace I got when my grandmother passed away. You remind me of memories, the good, the bad, the in-between. You remind me of life. Please keep on living. Sagittarius: The reason that I didn’t cry when you left was because crying means letting go, or so you said. And I don’t want to let you go. I want you to be a part of me, forever. But I can’t do that, you would rot in the hell hole that is my mind. I can’t put you through more cruelty. I hate how I am the reason you cry on bad nights, do you still wonder if I miss you? I do. I do. I do. Regret was stronger than appreciation. But you’re so fucking strong. Your eyes still shine even when you’re sad. You think no one likes you yet you know that’s not true. You’re the reason I am alive. You let me experience pain, beauty, emotion. You let me live. You’re so much more than enough, sometimes I can’t even handle who you are. You are dazzling. But you could never control your heart, it always wandered over the streets of other people’s bodies. Capricorn: When the sun sets over mountains and the houses made of glass shatter I will still see your name in the sky in neon lights. The little bugs in our home always wanted to be friends with you. They always say on the tip of your nose with gentle smiles. I never envied you, I wish I treasured you. You are so simplistic and nice. Nice. Too underrated for your own good, no? Aren’t we all. Your hands will still be remembered by those you touched. You always leave some kind of mark that they don’t want to wash off. You have that affect on people. You make them drown their thoughts and hold their breath when you walk into a room. You are an old soul, you know. Why? You just do. Because you’re you. And nothing can change that or the late nights, the slowness or the fastness in your walk doesn’t matter for the right people. They will walk for you until they have blathers on their toes. If they don’t you know what to do. Aquarius: Swirls of icy wind are always your accomplice. Your cold, and beautiful; like snow. The wires always stick to your senses, they get stuck in between your backbone. They twist around your spine and plug into the back of your brain. You let other people control you like you’re a mindless puppet. I think the wires got the best of you. Whenever you speak your mind it says something beautiful and unique. You are original, not ordinary. I am sorry they teach you that being unique is bad and that you have to fit into this ‘ordinary’ world as an ‘ordinary’ person. Nothing is ordinary about you, not even your name. Your name says who you are as a person, if someone asks me to define you I will simply say your name, the definition of your personality is your name. Because your name is unique and so is your personality. Don’t let other people control you. Pisces: The imaginary butterflies with the raven black wings told me about you. They tell me that your head is in a universe they have never seen, with all things beautiful and all things bad. They see you crying with your knees tugged up sometimes, hands in your hair as you hide beneath sheets of darkness. You write poetry with the blood in the sink and make galaxies with the stars you find inside other people their eyes. A gentle smile always embraces your lips, “So happy, yet so sad” they say. A mask is something you believe is beautiful, but I believe you are beautiful. The real you. Not the you who cautiously walks over this realm of sadness. Your moonlit hair is so silky, your sunlit eyes are so sad. Chin up little soldier.

Athena’s hands were tied. Yes, she was a powerful Goddess, but she was very much a woman in a “boys club”, and the true offending party (don’t think for a moment that Athena blamed Medusa for being raped in the temple, Athena knows better) held all the cards. There was nothing that Athena could do to punish the true criminal, and she was expected to punish Medusa by everyone else. What’s a Goddess to do when she cannot punish those who need to be punished and is expected to punish not only the truly innocent party, but her most beloved follower? Use that incredible brain power she had to protect Medusa at all costs, and of course the men would see it as punishment, to be have her beauty stripped from her and sent to live in the shadows. Medusa should have been KILLED for supposedly defiling the temple, whether she truly did or not, but she was given the gift of life, and the ability to protect herself and her daughters (who she bore thanks to Poseidon). This is why Medusa’s image was used to signify woman’s shelters and safe houses.