Mourning the Caterpillar

Finding safety in change, sitting with existential grief, and trusting my wings to unfurl.

Photo by Justin Lauria on Unsplash

Sometimes, I want to write very structured, thought-out and researched pieces and sometimes I just want to paint what I’m feeling in words, hoping that someone will find themselves between my lines and see their own light. This piece is written from my core.

I had two moments of clarity fairly recently that stuck with me and both are related to letting go of the version of me who didn’t endure the medical trauma I had last year.

You see, in my mind, I kept desperately wanting for things to feel “normal” again, for me to feel like myself again. For me to feel the confidence, the exuberance and the freedom I had before, to be myself. These three traits of myself had been built after overcoming the previous years and all the ground shattering events they brought on.

So I was clinging to anything that brought a sense of familiarity, but nothing did. And every little thing that did not bring familiarity and felt different triggered a flight response. So I involuntarily kept scanning for safety, for familiarity within myself. But there was nothing to be found. I had changed physically and mentally.

Photo by Francisco J. Villena on Unsplash

I said as much to my somatic therapist and he said the simplest phrase “let her go”.

It was so simple, but it was the first time I realised that I was clinging to that version of me to give me a sense of safety. But I was not her.. I couldn’t be her… she had not gone through what I had.

In hindsight, I was looking back with rose tinted glasses. That version of me ended up sick because I couldn’t process my rage and helplessness at the systems and the abuse within them, that version of me had dismissed all my needs, my wants and made myself as small as possible to hide from the overwhelm of the world.

And yet, because it was familiar, it gave me the illusion of safety.

Last week in a creative writing workshop (held by the lovely Alexandra Palaloga), as I was writing, an image popped in my head: the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly.

For the caterpillar to become a butterfly, it becomes completely liquid inside the chrysalis and then reorganizes itself into a vastly different version of itself. A process I knew so much about, but that was the moment when it became clear to me that I was comparing the current version of myself: the butterfly, to the old version of me: the caterpillar. And oh how different they are, how eloquent the metaphor for the deep transformations my identity went through.

Photo by elaine alex on Unsplash

In that workshop I wrote a poem for my old version, to ease the process of letting go without fearing that I will be losing myself entirely. I cried and my voice shook and cracked when I read it, but I didn’t stop. I wanted to sit with the grief, to allow it to be witnessed, because there is a special flavour of grief in saying goodbye to the version of you who was a little less hurt, a little less healed, a little more innocent, a little less scarred. To the version of you that was familiar.

After that workshop I thought about what has helped me go through melting into liquid and reorganizing myself.

Sometimes it was inertia, the feeling that I had to keep going, even if only a step further, even if I didn’t know where to go, even if I took long breaks in between.

Sometimes it was anger, at the people who hurt me when I was most vulnerable, anger at the idea that they could have such power over how I lived my life.

Sometimes it was pride and desperation, both at the same time. Pride that I lived and transformed so much pain and desperation at the idea that I could still be robbed of my joy and love of life.

So I went back to writing again.

This time, I thought of all of the good that has entered in my life in the past year, of the friendships I built and deepened, the positive outcomes of the hard and vulnerable conversations, the therapists which helped and supported my healing, the new professional path that emerged and all the patterns I broke, which formed the glass ceiling impeding my growth.

I thought about all the delicious goodness that came into my life, despite myself feeling like a mess, despite not putting in conscious effort to draw it in.

Photo by Thomas Elliott on Unsplash

I still feel like my wings haven’t completely unfurled, but I have learnt that I can show up no matter what, that I don’t have to be in control or have it all together, that I can show up messy and deeply lost and I can still build, nurture and grow.

A reminder to have faith in the flow of life and how it will always bring both bitter and sweet things. A reminder to always keep my eyes open to it.

You already know that my goal is for this to be a two-way street and I do want to hear about your own experience, so naturally I have questions.

If you’d write a letter the version of yourself from a year ago

- the caterpillar before the change -

what would you say?

Thank you for exploring In the Dark with me! I look forward to reading your stories.