Your zodiac animal is
only the beginning.

You clock everything before anyone bothers to explain it — the pause before an answer, the tension nobody's named yet. People call you calm. You're not. You're just running three moves ahead, deciding how much of what you already know you're willing to say.

You walk in and the room shifts. People lean toward you before they know why. That part's real. What's also real: the same heat that pulls everyone in is burning through you twice as fast, and you're too busy lighting others up to notice you're running on empty.

You don't want fast. You want right, and you'll wait years for it without complaint. From the outside that looks like patience. It isn't. It's stubbornness wearing patience's clothes, and anyone who's tried to rush you has already found out how deep it goes.

You say what everyone else is thinking and swallowing. No cushioning, no apology tucked in front of it. Some people call that honesty. Others call it cruelty wearing a clean shirt. You stopped correcting them a long time ago — because deep down, you're not sure they're wrong.

Everyone you know has someone they call when things fall apart. For a long list of people, that someone is you. You built your entire identity on being the one who doesn't break. Nobody's asked, in years, what happens to the anchor when it's the one drowning.