The Sea Devours The Goat

Emotions are water; they fill the entirety of whatever container they’re in. Capricorns love structure and stability and this is why we will only pour our emotions into containers we feel they’ll be safe in. Often we will build ourselves smaller and smaller containers in an attempt to diminish the flow, assuming that the only true safety is within.

When I’m alone in my house, it floods. My emotions fill every corner of every room. I am free to wade around in them, splash about, or simply sit in them. I feel an exhale in my soul as desperate and full of relief as the first inhale after prolonged submersion. Knee-deep is much more manageable than anything above the neck. When I can see the ocean floor, so many details emerge. There’s so much life teeming below the surface, so many moving parts and subtle glimpses of savagery and beauty. It’s much less murky, much less intimidating than the dark depths I create when inevitably someone comes home and all these feelings come flowing back into me, the smallest container there is.

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As Capricorns, we want to contain the entire sea. We want to break down the unimaginably vast into manageable bits and pieces. And when we realize the futility of telling water where to go, we ascend from it. We remove ourselves from the water and begin the climb upward. Scaling the brutally honest mountainside is grueling, but it’s straightforward. It’s solid and malleable, much unlike water. Much unlike emotions. The sea goat may resent the sea for her inability to be controlled, but eventually it must realize that the mountain is just as unforgiving. Elevated and isolated is a good hiding place away from the sea, from our feelings, but that does not mean it is safe.

I believe there is a reason the sea goat is the sea goat. We were never meant to exist purely in the water, or on land, but somewhere exactly in between the two. To dive in headfirst is to risk losing oneself to an inner world, the most sacred of containers, but remaining alone on the mountaintop means losing an outer world that is necessary for survival. The sea-goat can simply not afford to lose, and that is why striking this balance is imperative for Capricorns. Knowing when to dip your tail in a bit further and when to spend an afternoon on the shore is a sacred and necessary skill. Emotions will remain water: unpredictable, inescapable, unfathomably powerful, and ultimately vital for sustaining life. We need not dehydrate ourselves and we certainly do not need to drown. Water can be carried in containers of many sizes.