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“I’m not just sitting around waiting for you to change,” he says, voice crackling gently on the other end of the receiver. “I’m not a butterfly collector”.
Something in you knows this is a lie. It’s a lie you tell yourself too. A universal lie. Every nuclear family, every dyadic unit, every set of lovers. Every sad, sensitive girl genius. Every narcissistic taker. Every man who thinks he has the key to enlightenment and ends up mistaking his finger for the moon. Every person they have ever held in that special way, who let them down, who failed them in some significant capacity, every hopeful beginning and humiliating end, they’re still all waiting there with their fucking tiny nets and their safari boots and their idealism to catch you as you tumble glistening from your cocoon of misery.
But larva and chrysalis are too much alike. Larva eats blindly as a precursor to sleep, a million blind hungry mouths, buffeted by the terror of the seemingly-unrestrained environment that surrounds it. Larva yearns for the chrysalis’ sleep. The chrysalis curls into the cocoon with relief. Imago is an illusion. We suffer a thousand small births but in the end we are still sleeping.
For each small tumble out of stasis, he waits for you. He seemed so gentle when you first met. So giving. So generous. Through the years his form changed, though the underlying essence remained the same. Once he was a teenage lover, so passionate, so infantile, so violent, so involved. Then he was a man who petulantly cajoled the world for favours, who liked you young and plump and virile on his arm, who was content to take and take. And then he was a luminous monster, shining in his addict’s narcissism, his silvered beauty tarnished by his pack of voracious demons that came so close to tearing your heart from your chest and slavering over the rest of you, steaming in the snow. Then he was a scared child who ran from your love, who hid his heart so far behind impenetrable defenses, who used rationality as a weapon, and who stole something from you that you hadn’t known you could lose. And now he is the calm, kind empath who preaches on perfect love and real intimacy, but chastises you for loving in the wrong way, tells you how you must change, patient words dripping with sincerity while he effectively makes it so he never really needs to know you.
And he waits for you to change. And you wait for him to love you. Struggling in your cocoon. All parts simultaneously comfortable and terrified. Should you stay where it’s safe and familiar? Can you even leave at all, really? You know where you are, you’re scared to leave, you need to leave, you hate where you are. As cyclical as nature, you return to the same resting spot. Your silent chrysalis mouth screams wordlessly. You spin, restless, in troubled sleep. Part of you is conscious of the fact that he is still there, just outside, patiently twirling his net.
Inexplicably, a part of you believes that when you are caught, you will be cherished and valued and supported. But past experience should remind you that it is equally likely that you will be killed. That was the ending of every false start, every little venture outside, after which you fell reeling back into safety, clutching a tiny and unbearable wound, phantom pains for a missing piece.
to be continued, probably.
Something in you knows this is a lie. It’s a lie you tell yourself too. A universal lie. Every nuclear family, every dyadic unit, every set of lovers. Every sad, sensitive girl genius. Every narcissistic taker. Every man who thinks he has the key to enlightenment and ends up mistaking his finger for the moon. Every person they have ever held in that special way, who let them down, who failed them in some significant capacity, every hopeful beginning and humiliating end, they’re still all waiting there with their fucking tiny nets and their safari boots and their idealism to catch you as you tumble glistening from your cocoon of misery.
But larva and chrysalis are too much alike. Larva eats blindly as a precursor to sleep, a million blind hungry mouths, buffeted by the terror of the seemingly-unrestrained environment that surrounds it. Larva yearns for the chrysalis’ sleep. The chrysalis curls into the cocoon with relief. Imago is an illusion. We suffer a thousand small births but in the end we are still sleeping.
For each small tumble out of stasis, he waits for you. He seemed so gentle when you first met. So giving. So generous. Through the years his form changed, though the underlying essence remained the same. Once he was a teenage lover, so passionate, so infantile, so violent, so involved. Then he was a man who petulantly cajoled the world for favours, who liked you young and plump and virile on his arm, who was content to take and take. And then he was a luminous monster, shining in his addict’s narcissism, his silvered beauty tarnished by his pack of voracious demons that came so close to tearing your heart from your chest and slavering over the rest of you, steaming in the snow. Then he was a scared child who ran from your love, who hid his heart so far behind impenetrable defenses, who used rationality as a weapon, and who stole something from you that you hadn’t known you could lose. And now he is the calm, kind empath who preaches on perfect love and real intimacy, but chastises you for loving in the wrong way, tells you how you must change, patient words dripping with sincerity while he effectively makes it so he never really needs to know you.
And he waits for you to change. And you wait for him to love you. Struggling in your cocoon. All parts simultaneously comfortable and terrified. Should you stay where it’s safe and familiar? Can you even leave at all, really? You know where you are, you’re scared to leave, you need to leave, you hate where you are. As cyclical as nature, you return to the same resting spot. Your silent chrysalis mouth screams wordlessly. You spin, restless, in troubled sleep. Part of you is conscious of the fact that he is still there, just outside, patiently twirling his net.
Inexplicably, a part of you believes that when you are caught, you will be cherished and valued and supported. But past experience should remind you that it is equally likely that you will be killed. That was the ending of every false start, every little venture outside, after which you fell reeling back into safety, clutching a tiny and unbearable wound, phantom pains for a missing piece.
to be continued, probably.
