hope is a butterfly

inspired by

Emily Mais

and her writing group <3

*

I see the butterflies, and I think of the journey it takes to be able to fly. They don't just wake up with wings—they change from the inside out. They have to break down entirely in the cocoon, becoming something unrecognizable before becoming something beautiful. I think about that a lot. How sometimes you have to fall apart before you become someone new.

When I was younger, I clung to the idea of a relationship freeing me from my loneliness. Friendships had let me down. I thought romantic love would be the answer. I was desperate to be "chosen." That kind of validation felt like the only cure for the ache I carried.

It's funny looking back at 18-year-old me. The way I built entire fantasy lives around guys who, if I met them today, I wouldn't even want to be friends with. At the time, I thought they would save me. I thought that being wanted by someone else would make me want myself. Then, at 21, I had my first real heartbreak... by a guy who later posted a photo on Instagram of himself doing the splits. That was my wake-up call.

Right around then, Taylor Swift released 1989, and I started watching Girls. It was like I was meeting parts of myself I hadn't fully known yet. I started to feel the early flutterings of change. I invested in friendships again. I started believing in the idea of community. It took a few years, but I started to imagine a life that wasn't dependent on someone else choosing me. I was building something for myself, from the ground up. I was becoming someone new.

Then the world shut down. A global pandemic and isolation.

I remember some of the girls I had just taken a trip with had done a socially distanced birthday party. I wasn’t invited. I still feel the disappointment in my gut when I realized how my deep care for those people was not reciprocated. As I was learning how important it is to value friendship over romantic love, I was being hurt almost more deeply than I had felt at 21 for the boy who did the splits.

Just as I was learning how to fly, everything stopped. The silence was loud, and all the momentum I had started to build collapsed into stillness. I spent my days watching birds hatch from the nest at my parents’ house. Reading Anne of Green Gables, relating to the little orphan girl.

It was in that quiet, I heard myself more clearly. I realized that metamorphosis isn't linear. You don't just transform once; you keep doing it. Over and over again. Every time life breaks you open. Like waves repeatedly crashing down.

*

Now, when I need hope, I reflect on the past. I think about the version of me who didn't think she could get through heartbreak. Who felt so invisible in rooms full of people. And yet, here I am. Still becoming. Still learning how to be soft in a hard world.

Hope doesn't always look like something big and momentous. Sometimes it's as small as getting out of bed. Sometimes it's choosing to reply to a text when you'd rather disappear. Sometimes it's choosing to believe there's still more waiting for you, even when you can't see it yet.

Hope, for me, isn't about blind optimism anymore. It's not waiting to be saved. It's a daily choice. To show up. To keep going. To trust the process even when it's messy.

I see the butterflies, and I remind myself that their flight is only possible because of everything they endured before the wings.