I used to not be a believer in horoscopes or astrology; frankly I thought it was a bunch of BS that was an excuse for people to plan their meaningless lives around, instead of actually doing anything about it. I didn’t believe in fate or that the stars already had stuff planned out for me. I also didn’t believe in what my sign said about me, because I didn’t think that I was anything like what a Libra is “supposed to be." Maybe some people are right, and horoscopes and the signs are a bunch of garbage written by some desperate, wannabe writer, but maybe they do have some truth to them. After all, what harm can come from reading your horoscope?

My friend group has this big joke that we are the way that we are because of our horoscope signs. As fate would have it (notice my use of the word fate), a very large part of my friend group are Aries, which can be the most spontaneous and daring signs. One of my friends, a Cancer, is one of the most sensitive and emotional people I’ve ever met. As it turns out, Cancers are known to be emotional and in tune with their feelings.

A handful of my friends are Scorpios, known for keeping their emotions and feelings locked tight within them, never wearing their hearts on their sleeves. I am a Libra, supposedly just and fair, but it doesn’t seem that way at times. Another time, we couldn’t figure out why two of my roommates were always getting into riffs with each other, until jokingly we looked up their compatibility signs and saw that Aries and Cancers can either be the worst or the best of friends.

I didn’t think that horoscopes had an ounce of truth until one night, a couple of weeks ago, after I had gotten broken up with by someone who I was in a long-term relationship with, and I needed to cheer myself up a bit. That night, I decided to read Vice articles, which you may know usually contain your horoscope at the end of the day’s journalism. That night, my horoscope told me that tonight would be a big night for relationship changes with someone you know very well. Was that coincidental, or did the stars actually know that my now ex-boyfriend was going to break up with me?

That was my first “awakening” as to the possibility of a higher power and the ability to read your fate. My second “awakening” was the next week, when on that Sunday I read my weekly horoscope, and it told me that on Wednesday, big relationship communications would take place and that I should be truthful about what I want. I didn’t think much about it, because let’s be honest, I already got dumped and didn’t want to even think about relationships in any form for a very long time. However, that Wednesday, big relationship talks did happen, though I had completely forgotten what my horoscope said on Sunday. Then I read the daily one for that Wednesday night and it told me that tonight I would be hearing from an important person in my life to communicate about our relationship. So are horoscopes fate or fake? You tell me.

I recently read an article that talked about how the horoscopes we read in the newspapers are fake because it’s written by some "eager interns, overworked journalists and only occasionally someone who truly believes they've got a link to the cosmos," which is a fair point, but I don’t think that’s always true. I think that there are some astrologers that do truly look at the stars and the planets. I think that astrology and astronomers really care about what they do. Frankly, I don’t really care that people claim that horoscopes are fake or real because people also like to claim that there is a higher power or that there is a Hell and Heaven to believe in (not that there is anything wrong with that).

But the thing is, it doesn’t matter if it’s phony or if there’s truth to what these horoscopes say, because I think that if it makes someone feel better about “knowing what their future,” then so be it: let people like the things that they like.