Everyone starts out as a caterpillar, awkward and eats tubs full of, not leaves, but ice cream because we don’t realize how body image will affect us in years of our adolescence. Butterflies, however, aren’t easy to spot nowadays. But now that I am twenty-three years old, I am always on the lookout.
I remember when we were in second grade when we took care of caterpillars and let them go and “be free” once they made that miraculous transformation.
I am the butterfly that made the miraculous transformation from that girl who was bullied constantly and called an “ugly bitch” and “fat ass.”
Another thing: butterflies don’t get credit for their worth here on Earth. This I know all too well. It was the morning of May 28, 2019, when my dad pulled me aside so my mom wouldn’t hear us. I thought I was about to get a sex talk after telling him I have a new boyfriend. No. Just as soon as I felt like my twenty-third year was about to “take off,” my dad chops off my new set of wings and calls me “fat” and that I’ll get diabetes and heart problems. My “dad” has been like this since my thirteenth birthday. I guess it’s to his “logic” that I was mature enough to determine he was a sociopath – one that doesn’t feel guilt, even when they’re “just kidding.” Plus, each year my mom and dad fight like two buzzards over a zebra carcus (me), not to mention like hippos over who will get to the watering hole first (my brother’s crippling sanity). No matter the situation, though, it seems as though my parents couldn’t put their differences aside for one thing. Oh, by the way, happy birthday!
