What to think when your horoscopes keep coming true.

My friends are fighting with their boyfriends, I’m getting irrationally angry at the smallest of things, my coworkers keep injuring themselves, and buildings are catching fire. What is going on, I wonder?

Oh wait, Mercury is in retrograde. AGAIN.

As per the last time Mercury decided to fuck with me, I’m starting to seriously wonder if the stars and the planets have more of an impact on me than I’d like to believe.

Four summers ago, just for fun, I had my astrology chart read.  I got the low down on all things ‘future’.

Obviously I wanted to know about boys.

“You’ve spent a couple of years out of touch with the dating world, but this year you’re going to start to trust yourself again.”

She was correct. Sometimes I think we read our horoscope and make things fit, and often times they are so vague that it’s easy to do so. But I didn’t have to stretch my experience very far to fit her reading.

My sixteen month dry spell was proof.

After a crushing disappointment at 24 – one of those almost-loves that you think is about to turn into something great and then crashes and burns as quickly as it started – I had definitely taken a good long break.

“Then the next two years you’ll meet people but none of those relationships will be stable. You’ll feel the build up at 27, and at 28 everything in your life will fall into place-life will be fantastic. This is when you’ll meet the right guy.”

All those boys….just a time kill I guess.

My friends and I had this running joke that the moment I turned 28 the first guy I laid eyes on would be my future husband. That didn’t exactly happen. I was born at 10:27 pm. The exact moment I turned 28 is lost in binge drinking oblivion.

But, what’s freaky is that within two weeks of turning 28, after two years of dating and four long years of being nobody’s girlfriend, I got drunk and kissed my coworker.

A couple weeks after that he became my boyfriend.

I kind of had my fingers crossed that I’d meet someone commitment-worthy within my 28th year of life, but I didn’t actually expect it to happen that quick.

Coincidence? Perhaps. But so far my life and my little astrology chart are right on par.

Right before I realized what a giant blooming crush I had on my now boyfriend, I read another freaky horoscope that came true: “This weekend something pivotal will end.”

At the end of that particular weekend, my dating nemesis and inspiration for my article in BRANDED about bad boys literally left the country.

My problem flew across the ocean.

I thought that was pretty pivotal, and his departure definitely marked an ending. Or so I thought.

What I learned last time Mercury went into retrograde was that it can cause things from the past to resurface. So it only makes sense that I would receive a message from the baddest of all bad boys telling me he missed me and that if things didn’t work out with my new guy I should move to New Zealand.

I explained to him that Mercury was in retrograde. “It makes people think strange thoughts; you’ll get over it.”

I also read that this retrograde in particular would cause a lot of over thinking and a lot of: “Is this what I really want?”

This is a very dangerous mind game to play with oneself. It’s a one way track to dissatisfaction.

“Mercury is very likely to play devils advocate with more force than usual.”

So no wonder I heard from the devil himself.

But the thing with astrology charts and horoscopes is that while they can be freakishly accurate, I would never want to know all the gory details of my future because what happens if I decide I’d like something different? Or worse, what if I was told of some looming illness in my future, or that I would end up divorced three times, or that I’d never get to see Taylor Swift live. Something tragic like that.

I would waste so much time fretting that this tragic thing would come true, that I’d never enjoy what’s happening right now. Which I’d like to point out to Mercury, is exactly what I want. So it can stop playing devils advocate anytime now.

How much of what becomes of us is really in our hands? I don’t quite know what I believe. I’m as Pisces as they get – a happy drunk, empathetic to a fault, imaginative and idealistic – so I really do like the idea that some things are simply written in the stars.

But astrology is based on the likelihood of things happening, and while I’m likely to do a lot of things (spend too much money spring shopping, drink too much the first Friday of Stampede, whine about the lineup at National yet go there anyways) I know that I still have full choice in these matters. Which is true for small decisions such as these, and larger matters of the heart.

But I’m not going to stop glancing at my horoscope and texting my friends when freaky shit comes true. And I will definitely continue to blame Mercury for any dramatic mood swings that I subject my boyfriend to.