Megan M.
I want to share something with you… I really, really hate that all color palettes associated with Scorpios are always the fucking same.
Deep reds and smoky blacks. Hues drenched in shades of opium and dripping in wine colored silks. It’s all so sexy and dark and mysterious, because Scorpios are sold to be sexy and dark and mysterious. I think that’s the biggest fucking farce astrologists ever sold to anyone who has never met a Scorpio before.
And I have a particular horse in this race because I AM a Scorpio. And before you start asking what my sun, moon, and rising are, first, who seriously has time to know that? And second, I’m a triple Scorpio baby, so suck it. I’m the most scorpion scorpio-ist Scorpio out there that I practically have a stinger growing out my ass. And I don’t want strangers who get all their facts from an astrology app downloaded on their phone to hear I’m a Scorpio and start making all these assumptions about me that aren’t true. That I must be someone, dark and mysterious, who is sexy and alluring and alluring sexy. Puh-LEASE. Just take one look at me and you’d think there was some sort of mix up when the stars were trying to decide when I should be born.
Let’s look at the facts, shall we, from the most trusted research around: Cosmopolitan.
Yes, you heard me right. I’m going to compare and contrast myself to traits that Cosmopolitan says Scorpios possess and see just how accurate they are, or if I was ever meant to be birthed as a Scorpio to begin with. Yes, we’re pulling straight from the magazine my mom banned me from looking at in the grocery store checkout line because she feared reading them would make me self-centered. Now I’m a narcissist without ever having picked up the magazine before, so jokes on her.
Scorpios are PASSIONATE (read: controlling)
This is one hundred percent true. If I don’t know what is going on all the time and am not directly involved in something that is even slightly related to me I will flip the fuck out. I need to know everything. I could lie to you and say it’s because I just care that deeply about everything all the time but NO, I’m exhausted trying to keep up with everyone’s business. But it’s better than the alternative. Sitting alone in my room on a Friday night getting drunk off Topo Chico to numb myself from the creeping anxiety attack of the thought of my ex fucking someone else right now. Living in my brain is great.
Scorpios are PERSISTENT (read: obsessive)
Read above.
Scorpios are STRATEGIC (read: secretive)
Alright, maybe these astrology bitches are on to something after all. I don’t talk about myself. Unless it’s in writing, or you’re one of my three (3) trusted confidantes that I persistently annoy with my petty little problems and melodrama. But I don’t talk about myself. I’ve been told by a therapist that I have an extreme hesitance to open up about my past. Bitch, I know! I thought that’s what you were supposed to help me with?!
No, I won’t be sharing anything about myself today, but I want to know every single deep, intimate, scary thought you’ve had in your darkest moments of isolation.
Scorpios are LOYAL (read: vengeful)
I have been burned enough times and abandoned by enough people who I’ve been told were supposed to love me unconditionally that I now know how to hold on to a good thing when I see it. I stay true to the people who I consider friends, who are a startling FEW, and would do anything for the people I love. But vengeful? Not really. I have this silly little habit brought on by years of trauma and toxic parenting that I bottle everything up inside until I either implode from the pressure or crave death. I hold grudges, certainly, but I would never think of acting on them and I handle confrontation by breaking out in a rash and crying. I am not properly equipped to handle this shit. What is “this shit” exactly?
/gestures vaguely to everything.
Scorpios are FEARLESSLY CURIOUS (read: morbid)
I’ve been told I have a dark sense of humor. I make jokes that I realize only in retrospect weren’t funny to everyone else and rather garnered a healthy amount of concern for my mental wellbeing. I come from a long line of women who have been institutionalized by mental health care professionals, but for all I know, maybe they went in making dark jokes that their therapists just took waaaaaay too seriously. I’m kidding. It’s because they were brown and doctors have a long history of not listening to women of color’s pain.
Alright, so maybe I am a Scorpio. Only a Scorpio would get so much out of reading about nothing but themselves and call it “research.”
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Megan M. is the Texas Review Press Publicity Fellow, the nonfiction editor for Defunkt Magazine, and social media manager for SWWIM Magazine. They were selected to be the 2022 Summer Intern for the National Book Foundation. Their work has been published in Variety Pack, just femme & dandy, and Coffin Bell Journal. They are completing their MFA at Sam Houston State University in Creative Writing, Editing, and Publishing.