Butterfly
Haven’t we all been there before? One minute we’re preparing for finals, having sleepovers with our new love, and staying up too late dancing with our friends, and the next we’re…
Well, working an okay job that we just don’t care about, slowly realizing that lover is actually a monster, and missing our girls from many miles away.
We’ve all been in our personal version of this, but she was IN IT.
In retrospect, our friendship was young — we had only a few years between us (though admittedly in those three years we’d gone from virtual internet strangers to entirely co-dependent roommates). Knowing her now, I never should have worried, but back then as her phone lit up for the 43rd time in an hour while she was spending a rare weekend at my house, I was worried.
I worried that this boy and his compulsive phone-calling was going to rip her young heart out and return it in an irreparable state.
I worried that her barista job that bored her would turn into a cancer of complacency.
And I worried that I’d lose her to all of the above.
Did I say I should have known better? I’m here to shout it from the rooftops: I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER!
As that relationship crumbled, I watched her emerge (just like the tired ol’ cliche of her favorite butterfly). She, with her ever-purposeful demeanor, turned on her heel and ran the fuck away toward all better things. She cut away each piece of her life that wasn’t working any more with the precision and patience of a surgeon. Even back then, she had mastered the art of the slowly-but-surely, something I still can’t wrap my arms around. And true to form, she cautiously rebuilt that life into something she loves.
But here’s the best part: In all her quiet, patient wisdom, she discerned that this life-building thing is an iterative process. Maybe what worked best back then, during the emergence, won’t always be what brings her joy. She never rested from putting these pieces together, even if sometimes her change was quiet, steady, and imperceptible.
So here we are at the newest re-emergence (I guess this is where the butterfly trope fails us) and I have the great joy of wishing her bon voyage to a new love and a new career in a city far, far away. But this time, I get front row seats to Act III with nearly a decade of friendship and a whole lot more trust between us.
You are magic.
