On Longing
Heartbreak, rejection, and the persistent ache for a love that transcends it all
Earlier this year I experienced the sort of heartbreak that wakes up the slumbering parts of you, long buried beneath the soot of old pain, shakes them by the shoulders, and says, “It’s time to remember.”
It was the sort of love I hadn’t opened up to since my mid-twenties — raw and rapturous and risky. Fast. Destined to fall together and fall apart. I fell in love almost instantly. And even though I felt the ending from the start, I was shattered when it finally arrived. I struggled to get out of bed for weeks. I raged and wept and burned things and cut cords and (consciously) fought tooth and nail to forget while (also consciously) I fought to remember. So did my body. Every day the ache in my chest forced me to remember. And every day I did.
I’d chant prayers for closure at my altar one day, and petition Venus for reconciliation the next. I’d pull tarot cards obsessively, asking questions that deepened my confusion and seeking answers that wouldn’t come. It was the aftermath of Neptune’s first pass over my natal Venus in Pisces — a once-in-a-lifetime transit that can bring us into deep relationship with disillusionment. And oh, was I there.
I’m already the type to go deep into the ache of a breakup. My Leo Moon and Pisces Venus demand it. So does all my Pluto stuff. There’s an edge to the pain that asks to be honored, witnessed, encapsulated, enshrined. And there’s a sort of beauty in the madness of heartbreak. It can birth profound art and wisdom. It can catalyze transformation. It can swallow you whole and spit you back out again, renewed.
But with Neptune’s influence, I plunged deeper than ever into this one. I gulped down sad songs like medicine. I dressed for a funeral and cried on dog walks, my eyes concealed beneath big sunglasses like a ghostly widow. I threw myself on my bed in despair more than once and sobbed so loudly I thought the neighbors might hear.
When grief has me imitating death every day by forgetting to live, I know it’s gone too far. It begins to touch on something deep and visceral within me that I’m sometimes afraid to acknowledge but always aware of:
I enjoy the pain of heartbreak.
The Pisces
I probably said that sentence out loud for the first time, “jokingly,” sometime around 2017. I was coming off of a fresh heartbreak with a deliciously unattainable Pisces Sun, whose Pisces Venus formed a near-exact conjunction to mine. The relationship was as maddening and painful as it was provocative and enchanting. For months, we toed the line between intimacy and avoidance, dancing around each other, flirting with affection, and responding to any flickers of rejection with a mix of avoidance (from him) and feigned coolness concealing desperation (from me).
For most of my love life, I’d flipped between roles in each relationship — from chaser to chased, from eager to aloof, from achingly open to painfully closed. But no matter the role, in all of these relationships, I felt alone. Emotional distance was the common denominator. Unmet needs. Unspoken desires. And a general sense of unreachability. This relationship was no different, but it felt different at the beginning. At the beginning, it felt like magic.
He lived in LA. I lived in San Francisco. We’d gone to the same college and apparently spent a whole day together at Outside Lands in 2011, though I didn’t remember him and I wasn’t aware of his existence until he rolled up in my Facebook DMs one day in October 2017. He told me he’d be visiting San Francisco for the weekend. He was a painter, he said. He was housesitting for a friend in the Bay and would love some company. It had been forever. “We should hang out.”
And so it began.
We met up at a Lumineers concert at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley. I was sneaking behind the amphitheater with my friends and he joined us with his friends. Within an hour, I was reclining against him with my head in his lap as we listened to the music waft up the hill to our hiding spot in the trees. Within a few hours, we were drunkenly wandering through the Fillmore District, laughing and making out, lost on our way back to my apartment. We spent that whole weekend in bed. It was a blur. He said he’d never done anything like that before. I didn’t believe him, but I let him lie to me because it felt better.
For the next few months, we flirted madly over texts and Facebook and Instagram and FaceTime. He told me how much he liked me. We sent each other songs and art and selfies and good morning texts. He took the train to visit me. I fell deeply in love with him while we roamed the city aimlessly, snapping candids of each other at that Mission bookstore, eating Peruvian at that spot on Haight, drinking wine on the rooftop of my apartment while the sun set over San Francisco. We had the same taste in music (hello Venus) and we spent hours listening to indie tracks in my bedroom before making love all night. In the morning I made us breakfast and tea and we ate together, cramped and cuddled on the fire escape.
I visited him in LA for his birthday a few months later. We got high and walked around the neighborhood he grew up in. We went on a hike with his friends and got sandwiches at the famous sandwich shop. I remember feeling self-conscious and shy around these LA skater boys who seemed too cool, too casual, and a little too sweet on themselves. I wanted them to like me. I wanted him to like me. I tried to meet him where he was at, but I began to feel like I was falling short. I noticed a quiet sneer appear in his soft-spoken words — the suggestion that he was mocking me when I got excited about a song he’d known for years, or when I was a little too eager to see him again.
It was hard to catch when I was in love and in denial, but easy to spot in the rearview mirror. Little jabs appeared here and there that told me I wasn’t enough. And as a lifelong subscriber to the idea that I wasn’t enough, I caught on quickly. I felt like I was walking on eggshells. One wrong move and I knew he’d be gone. I was responsive to it before I could ever name it. I began tempering my affection, cooling down my fondness, and trying to stuff my love in a bag so it wouldn’t be too obvious or scary. It didn’t work at all, because I don’t work like that at all. I’m a gusher. I love love. And I love to express love. But this felt like navigating trip wire after trip wire trying to reach the evasive promise of something secure.
He visited once more in early spring, but his waning interest became more obvious as his texts grew sparer, his attention splintered, and he stopped making plans to visit me. Excuses popped up for why he couldn’t come see me again. Money was tight, or his schedule was packed. It had been about five months, and I was all in. I wanted more. I wanted commitment. He didn’t. Or so it seemed. Neither of us knew how to talk about that. So we let it simmer, and agreed to tell each other if we met someone else. He didn’t tell me, but he left his Facebook logged in on my computer that spring, and I scrolled through a sea of messages he’d sent to the other women he was enchanting.
I didn’t say a word. But as things grew shakier and weirder between us, I started looking elsewhere too — it was self-preservation mixed with genuine desire for real connection. I hooked up with a coworker for a few weeks, and I spent a couple days in London with an ex-lover who I’d met abroad years before. I never told the Pisces about either one, and he never told me about the women he was seeing in LA. It was to be expected, after all. What were we? The lack of definition seemed to imply a lack of respect too. A lack of decency. The lack of definition seemed to be imply that he didn’t owe me anything.
Regardless, I was still hinging my hopes for a recovery on the festival he’d invited me to weeks before. He’d be live painting there, and we’d be camping together. In the weeks leading up to it, I felt sure things were shifting for the better. So I was devastated when he asked me to “just be friends for the weekend” on day one of the four-day music festival. We were sharing a tent. His tent. I’d driven four hours down there with his best friend. I didn’t have a car or any camping supplies, and I didn’t know anyone else there.
I cried and raged and drank too much tequila and called him a vampire. I accused him of still being in love with his ex. I wrote a sad poem in a fury, huddled in his tent, trying to perform how much I was hurting because I didn’t know how to tell him how much I was hurting. And then we went to bed. And then he slipped his hand under my shirt. And then we had sex. The next day, I called my friends crying as I collided with the reality that he’d never love me properly. I avoided him all day, dipping between sound baths and yoga classes and live sets, trying to appear busy and unbothered as I crumbled internally.
But I met a new friend who was going through a heartbreak of their own, and we hung out all day. I dropped acid for the first time that afternoon, and as I saw honey dripping from the sky, I felt the seeds of non-attachment bubble up within me. Nothing is permanent. It’s all love anyway. I don’t need any one person to be happy.
Oh, drugs. It was a charming thought. Profound, even, for that moment and my level of consciousness at the time. But it didn’t last. Though I soaked up the temporary high of our weekend connection, there was a death sentence on the other side of Sunday. I welcomed his touch and his attention while it lasted. And then I spent the next few months grieving a ghost, and the next few years turning that relationship over in my head, trying to understand where I’d gone wrong. I felt that if only I could “cure” the part of me that loved “too much,” then I might not feel the severity of that pain again. I’d been through big loss before, but it was the first time I’d really opened up to love like that since my Big Teen Heartbreak. And it hurt like hell.
We saw each other in person once more, at that same festival a year later. It was awkward and terrible. I was dating someone else at the time, but the Pisces had offered me a free guest ticket and a part of me was aching for redemption — to show him how okay I was. That fell apart when my guest pass fell through. I arrived at the booth and there was no ticket to my name. He told me he didn’t know what happened. I felt embarrassed for expecting it to be there, for expecting anything at all. That night he helped me clumsily assemble my tent and I drank too much whiskey trying to ease my nerves. Then he disappeared for the weekend, and I had one of the worst trips of my life the next day. He ignored my text asking to say goodbye on Sunday, and so it was.
Despite the shit treatment, I let him swim in and out of my life for a few more years. He would show up conveniently in the moments I was at my most vulnerable — on the edge of a breakup, during a health crisis, right after a big move. It’s like he heard the siren call. A DM would appear. Or a wee-hours text. I’d lose my breath for a moment as his name flashed on the screen. There were always promises — I’ll come visit you — or coercive reminders — This song always makes me think of you — or flat-out advances, appearing out of thin air, after months of total silence — I want to make love to you on your roof over and over.
Once he even sent me a dick pic in the middle of the night while I was traveling. I was dating someone at the time, and my ex found it when he searched my texts from my computer while I showered. (No, that wasn’t a healthy relationship either.) He was packing up his bag to leave when I came back to the room. I tried to explain that nothing happened, and I didn’t even ask for it (which was true), but even the truth felt like a lie, because it did mean something. I hated that it meant something. I hated that I couldn’t seem to kick him out of my head. I hated that, after all of the emotional landmines I’d stepped on trying reach him, I still wanted him.
The Longing
When I’m in love, I feel awe. I’m in awe of the human standing before me. I’m in awe of the bliss that their presence evokes. I’m in awe of the depth of our connection and the almost cinematic-level magic that dances with and around us. I’m in awe of the synchronicity that seems to coo it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. My Pisces Venus acts as ethereal guide to my Taurus Ascendant, Sun, and Mercury, and sharing that Venus conjunction with a lover felt other-worldly at times. But his evasiveness paired with my romanticism and insecurity had me feeling like a perpetual ick of a human — the painful embodiment of too-muchness.
That’s a deep injury for my Leo Moon. For months (hell, years) I ached over the idea that I would forever come on “too” strong, do “too” much, be “too” loving, or perform some other flavor of extra that would make me undesirable and unlovable. Meanwhile, I wailed at the culture of aloofness I saw budding around me in the dating scene. Up until my mid-twenties, I’d been able to hold a front of icy detachment too. But that cracked open when my heart was broken. And that break revealed the acute longing simmering just beneath the surface. I longed to be loved in the way that I loved, and I feared I never would be.
I don’t know a single fellow Leo Moon or Pisces Venus who doesn’t frequently struggle with the bigness of their feelings or the abundance of their affection too. For those of us with loving, open-hearted companions, that struggle can dissolve into felt acceptance, deep vulnerability, and remarkable intimacy. But without the right relational or creative containers to hold it — and a whopping dose of self-love and groundedness — all that emotive power can become overwhelming, and even destructive, like a wildfire or a tidal wave that consumes instead of creates.
How do I keep loving in a world that fears love? Where do I put all of this? How do I fix me? What is wrong with me?
I simmered over these questions for years in my twenties, contemplating why I’d experienced so many catastrophically painful relationships. There was all the early stuff, sure, I thought (the “early stuff” being childhood trauma). But I hadn’t yet reached critical altitude when it came to understanding my own relational patterns and their source. I hadn’t yet studied astrology, either. But I felt the acute lack of something that I was constantly reaching for — a love that would help me transcend the pain of everyday reality, a pain I hadn’t properly faced.
Bell Hooks articulated both the desire for and the fear of love brilliantly in All About Love, when discussing the modern denial that love is real:
“Individuals who want to believe that there is no fulfillment in love, that true love does not exist, cling to these assumptions because this despair is actually easier to face than the reality that love is a real fact of life but is absent from their lives.”
This particular heartbreak sent me back to therapy to explore that deeper stuff — the absence of love that existed in my childhood homes, marked by abuse; the chronic neglect and invalidation; my pattern of dating emotionally unavailable men who resembled my father; my pattern of emotional unavailability; etc. etc. In this way, a profound heartbreak marked the beginning of profound healing. I began a years-long journey of trauma healing that would remove the dam, and help me remember what it meant to love myself.
The Remembering
“It’s time to remember” my heart shouted at me, back in 2024, as I recoiled into the heartbreak of the fling that sent me tailspinning this spring. But I didn’t know what I was meant to remember. And for the first time in years, I didn’t know how to go on without someone. It felt like pieces of myself had been ripped out, shredded, and strewn about. I didn’t have the energy to retrieve them, so I just sat in my pain. I spent hours upon hours pulling tarot cards, drafting letters, and walking the path by my apartment hoping to see a new ghost.
I’ve loved and lost plenty as an adult, but this time was different. I’d met another kindred soul, and we recognized each other. It was kismet — one of those “if I hadn’t done XYZ, and you hadn’t done XYZ, we’d never have crossed paths” stories, full of synchronicity that left me spellbound and aching for certainty. I knew that Neptune was applying to its first exact conjunction with my Venus. I’d been feeling it for months. But it’s one thing to conceptualize a once-in-a-lifetime transit, and another to experience it.
Months before, I’d sent a semi-frantic message to Amanda Moreno, who has Venus at the same degree.
“Amanda is Neptune going to break my heart? 😭 Why does it feel so intense already??!!!!! It’s still over 2° awayyyyyyyyy and separatingggg. Have you been feeling it?
Reporting live to you now, nine months after I sent that message: Yes. Yes. Neptune did, in fact, break my heart. And Neptune continues to break my heart. And Neptune continues to break me open — making me more aware than ever of the immense beauty around me. I’ve wept over the sound of geese flying overhead and the smell of wildfire smoke. I’ve clutched my heart at the sight of sky touching river. I’ve spent more than a few afternoons speaking with the trees. And as I feel into the fabric of it all, I’m reminded of the interconnectedness that that honey-dripping sky was beginning to teach me about back in 2017, when I was high as a kite and new to the language of the universe.
So much has changed since then. So much has healed and so much has hurt. But I know now that hurt doesn’t happen because I’m unlovable. I know that rejection doesn’t mark me as profane. I know that if I’m broken, we’re all broken, and life doesn’t seem to be an ordeal of brokenness, so much as it’s an invitation to embrace the impermanence of it all. The pain will fade and be replaced by new love. And that new love may give way to pain someday. And that pain may send us to the very spot we need to go in order to learn how to open our hearts all over again.
In writing this piece — the first time I’ve really captured the story of the Pisces outside of poetry — I’ve discovered the through lines that I missed when I first met this latest love. And I’ve discovered the magic and inspiration that I missed when I was so deep in the trenches of both heartbreaks that I couldn’t see the light beckoning me.
create, create, create
I got that tattooed on my forearm when I visited San Francisco for the first time after moving to Portland in 2019. Visiting the city brought a rush of memories to the surface. Sharp, quick aches. The street I lived on, five minutes from The Panhandle, a strip of park that shoots of off Golden Gate Park and marks the upper edge of Haight-Ashbury, where the Pisces and I traced so many stories. There were ghosts all over that city. They weren’t scary, or ravenous. They were just waiting — reminders, waiting to remind me.
Now I have new reminders. I walk a path every day that I once walked with a new love, now ghost. I see the tiny tree I pointed excitedly at on our first nervous walk together. I see the boulder we sat on and said goodbye at. I see memories everywhere. And sometimes it’s painful. I’ll still tear up when the lyrics of the song catch me just right, showing me something I’ve forgotten. But now I’ve learned. Now I’ve learned. These ghosts aren’t scary, or ravenous. They’re just waiting — reminders, waiting to remind me.
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Jana Barrett is an astrologer, diviner, and poet. You can follow them on Substack for more writing, visit feelingloudly.com to explore their offerings, and find all of their most important links here. Sign up for their bi-monthly newsletter, The Moonletter, for New Moon + Full Moon forecasts and tarot readings. And follow them on social @feelingloudly. If you’re interested in going deeper, become a patron for their exclusive content, live group readings, and more.
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I'm just so so grateful you got this piece out of you and that you are willing to share these parts of you here.
Also: "I felt that if only I could “cure” the part of me that loved “too much,” then I might not feel the severity of that pain again."
This is the most relatable Venus in Pisces quote I've ever read. My heart hurts just reading it. Accepting that I cannot cage in my Venus in Pisces heart-that-loves-too-much, but can instead do my best to develop discernment while knowing that the guardrails will inevitably come off to some extent when the right connection arrives has been SUCH a process.
Such a beautiful retelling of an incredibly painful process. Thank you for sharing this, Jana! It's not easy to lay so much so bare for all to witness, but it sounds like the process of writing this piece has been an important ingredient in your healing process. May your heart's fullness be welcomed by a worthy love.
It has also served as an alert of sorts: although my Aries Venus has a very different feel from your Pisces Venus, Neptune will be conjoining it beginning in early 2027. I've gotten so accustomed to Neptune in Pisces, I honestly haven't given this transit any significant thought. But given how confusing things felt when Neptune rolled over my 10th house cusp several years ago, I sense Neptune-Venus is something worth having on my radar...