Our eyes rest on familiar places. I find the bolt on the side of the desk, the edges of the mosaic pieces set into the coffee table, the white hangar on the wooden coat tree, disjointed in its level plastic brightness. I follow the lines of the zen garden drawing, the lines of the suspended ceiling tiles, the lines of the four silver hinges on the door.
I used to glance to my left, where I'd meet the eye of a young Sigmund Freud gazing out from the back of a book cover in a vaguely comforting way. But I mentioned it to my therapist, about Freud, and he rearranged the books. Sometimes I miss him, the pre-cancer, pre-cocaine, self-assured hipster Sigmund in the therapy room.
I know which places to avoid as I shift my gaze during session. The detritus between the desk and windowsill. The pristine and mangled shells he once pulled down from the bookshelf for a demonstration on the beauty of imperfection. The button on the phone that glows when the next patient is waiting, reminding me that my time here is ending.
But mostly I avoid the butterfly. Two hundred hours in this room and the metal butterfly directly across from me remains tethered to the desk by a swirling metal rod, wings spread in imaginary flight.
***
Things have been good lately. That sentence is insufficient to explain it. Various analogies are insufficient to explain it, but I'll try.
It's as though the balance shifted from empty to whole. Like Weber's threshold, this felt sense of wholeness suddenly moving into conscious awareness. Although I'm certain there's plenty of room to grow, I've just been enjoying this therapeutic valley. Soaking it in. I hear myself saying things in therapy that, when I've said them before, have felt crushing and immutable. And yet, I say them now and feel acceptance and peace. "I don't think that will ever be the way it once was." "It's scary to love knowing the other person is free to leave." I feel grounded, as if my roots have expanded and I'm... stable? Anchored? (Question marks because the feels are still so foreign to me. Is this what those words feel like?)
I wouldn't say I'm whole or I love myself or (god forbid) I have become the butterfly -- these things the self-help books and my therapist give me permission to say. My version is a touch equivocal and rambling. Something along the lines of "I'm examining with optimistic curiosity this feeling of peace and acceptance of myself, my past, relationships, the world, et cetera."
Maybe all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well. Maybe. I'll allow for the possibility. This is progress, and if there's one thing I will probably never stop liking, it's progress.
***
My favorite part of the butterfly house is the observation window where they've carefully tacked strings of perfectly-spaced chrysalises. I linger there, always longer than my children and friends. I watch as people cluster, scan the display, and release a tiny disappointed sigh when they don't see a beautiful butterfly emerging in the five-second window they've allowed for this occurrence.
I'm captivated. I once let the children run amok while I stood fixated on a recently-emerged Swallowtail for what felt like hours. It was pitching around the bottom of the display, wings wet and drooping, trying again and again to climb to one of the suspended ropes. It seemed so tired and shaky on its spindly legs. Yet it tried again, dragging itself up. I actually don't remember whether it got to the rope before I was pulled away, but I remember thinking, "This is the thing to focus on here." Not the luna moth with her impressive wingspan, not the chrysalis shaking, but this. This brand new butterfly discombobulated but determined. Not beautiful, unable to fly, probably wondering what the fuck just happened. This is how change feels.
***
We celebrate the butterfly. We forget the caterpillar.
We don't consider the fear, the pain, the undoing and rearranging in the chrysalis.
We skip over the wet-winged trepidation. We leave out the important part.
Why? Maybe because it's cleaner that way. More succinct, easier to convey into a motivational poster?
But when we skip to the end, we don't talk about the struggle. Growth doesn't just happen. Forgiveness, acceptance, peace -- there's no talking oneself into them. Well, at least for me there wasn't. I could stare at that godforsaken metal butterfly on my therapist's desk all day and grow incensed, convinced its very existence was designed to make caterpillar me feel inferior and hopeless (after all, how does a bumbling caterpillar ever become a graceful butterfly?).
For now, I take comfort in finally being able to explain my beef with the butterfly.
The caterpillar part, the part with the chrysalis where everything melts into soup*, the wet-winged neophyte part? That's where the magic happens.
*I know it doesn't all melt into soup. Certain organs are preserved. My favorite analogy for the metamorphosis is that it's a Lego sculpture being taken apart and then the same bricks rearranged into a new form. But it sounds better when you say it melts into soup.
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