Butterflies are a common and almost inevitable pest of the human stomach. They most commonly take root during the pubescent stages of life, when everyone is at their most vulnerable and no one knows what to do anyway.
Stomach-butterflies are a sure sign of an invested heart, and can become dangerous if the body which they occupy does not properly treat them. Though harmless to an extent, side effects of your butterflies may include nausea, vomiting, dizziness, inability to speak properly, loss of appetite, bad decisions, a broken heart, and death.
In order to treat the case of the butterflies, we must first understand them. It is this lack of understanding which causes the following cycle in most weary victims:
1. Denial
Because we are all so used to caterpillars, butterflies are not typically noticed until they have already safely established themselves within their unsuspecting host. The caterpillars of good intentions have always been a reliable and trustworthy friend of the stomach and heart, providing unconditional selflessness and brotherhood. They are usually quiet and innocent and comfortable. This is why, when you first notice the opening of chrysalises, you find yourself ignoring it out of fear of the unknown.
You continue with your life, unconsciously lying to yourself every time the butterflies awaken within. You tell yourself they are only moths, and the acid will take care of them in time. After this, the butterflies are put entirely out of mind until their constant ignored fluttering builds up such buried panic in the body, it is released in one of the next two reactions.
2. Fight or Flight
By the time you realize your condition, the butterflies have by now settled themselves quite well. Their population has peaked and they are beginning to run out of room, softly pressing at the stomach's outer lining and pushing themselves up the esophagus with wide, open wings and tickling feet.
You are too late.
Frightened, you act quickly and decisively in one or both of the next two options.
1.) Running from them:
You know you cannot run from something inside you, but that doesn't stop you from trying. You run from them in a mindless panic, avoiding everything they love, every soft and gentle situation and thought. You run from date offers and moments of togetherness and feelings of serendipity. You run without stopping, the majority of your conscious thoughts made up of the words "NO!" and "STOP!" and "BUT BROWN EYES ARE SO MUCH PRETTIER!"
You run, and you run, and you run. You run until you are very tired and, in desperation, turn around and begin to fight.
2.) Killing them:
This killing of the butterflies is the worst and most heart-breaking stage in the cycle.
It is usually found in only the worst of cases, when the butterflies start to show, as if they glow behind rosy cheeks and tickle the school-girl giggles from your mouth, pouring out of panicked eyes in quiet adoration. They press against your sternum and nestle among the unspoken words settled in your lungs, igniting at each breath of his air. They have gone too far, and for that, they must leave.
And it will be hell.
You do not know where to stab, so you just keep going, clumsy and shaking, and often times miss the stomach entirely. Instead you open other wounds, wounds of things you had wished to forget, hidden in the bones and marrow. The grasshoppers of anxiety awaken and bleed on the bumblebees of memory. Insects of all sorts begin to die, some of which are necessary and helpful, and you - though sick - do not truly suffer until you finally kill what you meant to.
There is a certain trauma in killing butterflies that cannot be described. They are beautiful and soft and delicate and they are so very close to your heart, helpless and well-meaning and innocent. You numb your heart and silence your mind, telling yourself it would have been best to kill them while they were caterpillars. You dig their shining wings into the concrete under the sole of your boot. You rip off their legs, one by one. You kill them, and you watch them die.
The killing hurts the most because, though you do not realize it, you are killing yourself.
3. Acceptance
The acceptance of butterflies is not Nirvana. It is not peace of mind. It is tired and bloody and filled with gasping from the previous trauma of internal warfare. It is quiet and bitter surrender.
"Okay, butterflies," you say. "Okay. You win."
You put up with their insistent fluttering, and grow patient to their whispers. You begin to see their vain beauty and incessant poetry as something wonderful and grand. Their vulnerability, the tender secrecy in the color of their wings, is beautiful. You shift your habits to their needs, and shift your heartbeat to their rhythm, allowing them even your own voice to keep, when no one else is listening. You almost begin to like each other.
But then there are too many butterflies.
They shift in your stomach, they tie knots in your veins, they pester your heart and your mind. They grow bigger and louder and now your words are never your own, only great helpless shouts of mindless verse. The butterflies have taken over, and now they try to be quiet but they are sick and hungry and there is nowhere else to hide.
If only you were one to cry, then they might escape through tears. If only you were one to drink, they could dribble out of words you won't remember saying. If only you hadn't sworn to stop the poetry they might have somehow found a way out onto paper.
But if not, they all end up in the same place eventually.
4. The End
You throw up the butterflies in your stomach.
They flutter at the bottom of a toilet bowl in a bathroom stall as you kneel on the dirty linoleum floor and watch them as they drown, and they are not what you were told they would be. They aren't the monarchs, the painted ladies, the tiger swallowtails or the blue morphos. For the first time, seeing them from the outside, you realize they were only moths. And they are the most beautiful thing that has ever been inside you.
They look at you and you at them, both so horribly ashamed, like they came out of their chrysalises as mistakes and couldn't bear to tell you. Their last dribbling breaths exclaim a single-word apology made up of a name. And they're just begging you not to tell anyone how beautiful they were.
It's almost worse than killing them, seeing them like that. Such pretty colors so disgraced. Of all the ways to die, did it have to be like this? In a toilet bowl? Somewhere in the smoke of an iron heart, you believe they deserved better.
You don't notice you're crying as you flush them down, saying "thank you" over and over to dying moths who cannot hear you. You're thanking them like you're drunk. Like their filling your belly gave you life for the first time, through typewriters and imaginary wine, and watching them leave is such a relief you feel drunk from so much not-drinking.
---
The truth seen in that awful bathroom stall is that there is no cure for butterflies. They come and go and when they do they are no sin in and of themselves. They are beautiful and dangerous but mostly they are worth it. They are worth the acid left in your throat.
And when you remember what caterpillars are made of, what wonderful mistakes they made, you feel them there inside your gut and remind yourself that you are only human, with such a subtle and unmistakable hint of God's image in the shape of your soul you begin to wonder why you ever worried you didn't belong.
You laugh over the toilet bowl, and welcome those that flutter as mirrors of ourselves.
And so, Seth, my answer to you is, let them flutter. In the end I suppose there is very little to be done. They are such small things, really. Such small and lovely little beasts. Maybe if we were a little bit older, if my wisdom were more reliable -- if we weren't left to find out on our own, if our parents gave us the love talk before the sex talk -- then maybe we'd have a better plan. But for now it's just us fools stabbing away at something that can't be helped.
Butterflies are not a sin, nor are they a punishment.
They're just beautiful little burdens, like us.
