Metamorphosis
I'm going through something right now
“I’m going through something right now.”
Rather than drifting between half-truths and sugarcoating when people ask me how I’ve been, I have decided to say this instead. A list comes to mind, easily, of all the things that are colliding in my life right now. Both good and bad, coming into view in a way that I cannot ignore. It feels like I am about to crack open and find I am something entirely new, that there is a revelation just around the corner.
I think I am in a chrysalis. Or I am supposed to be. The problem lies in that I cannot hide away. I have to go on, go to work, and cannot rest like I know I need to. On both sides, I can feel the layers, stripes of sedimentary rock. Trauma and pain that has built up over 26 years, synthesizing and surging so I cannot look away any longer, must face it, deal with it, rewrite it into something I can live with. On the other side, my wants and desires and dreams are becoming clearer, my sense of self solidifying, the path onward appearing. They are just out of reach. Ready to fall together and collapse onto me.
At a kitchen table that is not my own, I watch a timelapse of a monarch in metamorphosis. Its body thrashes, hanging from the stem, as it encases itself. Then it is still. I learned about butterflies in first grade, saw the pictures of each stage of life, watched them emerge in the cylindrical net we kept in the classroom until we released them into the crisp spring air. It was a beautiful thing, I thought then. I did not consider that it must be so painful.
There is no question as to why it has not happened by now. I know that to become the person I want to be, I need to deal with all the hard things from my past and all the ways it has kept hold of me—actually face it and change it. All these years I have been putting bandaids on gashes, thinking the healing will happen from a distance. But there is no way to leave the old self behind without tearing out the old wounds, making space for something new and more whole.
A type of exhaustion that cannot be remedied through sleep enwraps me. It lives as a hoard of bees swarming my organs, feeding off of what is meant to sustain me. Whatever has been replenished is soon depleted again. I cannot figure out how I am supposed to undergo healing in this state. I texted my therapist on a Saturday morning, something I haven’t done in years. Had an emergency session from my car during my lunch. When it was over she said, “We need to talk more about this.” I was unsurprised and found comfort in it. I do not know how to do this on my own.
As a child, I remember waking in the night with my limbs aching, sore for a reason I did not know. My mother told me it was growing pains. She said it meant we would have to get me new shoes soon. I understood that it meant I was getting taller, but felt left in the lurch knowing there was nothing I could do to mitigate the pain, could only suffer through it.
In January, I said that I need to stop cracking myself open before I am set. I can see now that it is almost time. I am right on the precipice. I cannot hide from the pain any longer. And it will be terrible. Until it is not. Perhaps by then the spring growth will have emerged to usher me forward. I can only hope that the process does not overcome me, that I will be there to see the butterflies.
Here’s to looking the scary thing right in the eye,
Helena
❤️🩹❤️🩹