The Shadow of a Butterfly
(Spring, 1999)
It must have been twenty years ago that it happened. I was camping with my family. There had been a storm the night before. It was a Thursday, I remember, because I used to go on a long walk every Thursday...
My shadow and I have been working together for a long time; pulling; twisting; turning. We've danced together, looking inside ourselves, pulling my hidden thoughts into awareness. My most vivid memories of this awareness include when I was first confronting my own memories of childhood sexual abuse. There was a palatable quality of despair to that experience. It began when I started having dreams in which I was being brutally raped by a stranger. He was very tall and muscular, and usually wore jeans and a leather jacket. I don't think I ever saw his face. The dreams were almost entirely black and white, except that I was almost always wearing a red dress. That, and the blood that would spill out from me after the attack, were the only color in the dreams. This was when I was first in college, around ten years ago.
These dreams came nightly for quite a few months before I finally went to see a campus therapist about them. I told her the story of the dreams, describing them in detail, ommitting nothing. What I remember most was how strangely detached I was from it all-- the dreams had disturbed me, but not terrified me. When I was done, her very first comment was "well, the first thing we have to do is to stop you from having those dreams."
As soon as she said this, I knew something was wrong with it. I didn't know how to articulate it at the time, but my body responded to it directly, providing me with an almost debilitating headache. When I walked out of that office I knew I wasn't going to be seeing this woman again.
...During my walk, I came across a butterfly that seemed to have been injured. It was laying on the ground, and though it was trying to flap its wings, it wasn't moving anywhere. I reached down and picked it up, and decided to carry it back to the campsite with me...
I've learned over the years to pay attention to those headaches-- they're a signal to me that something very wrong has happened, something I can't quite understand yet on an intellectual level. What I now understand about the encounter with the therapist is that what she was trying to do was to separate me from my shadow by silencing it. My shadow was providing the dreams, telling me there was something I needed to learn.
While much of this happened a long time ago, I find that the journeys I face regarding it do not necessarily end with time. My past experiences tend to coalesce into present ones, reforming and reshaping themselves, reflecting my current experiences in the shadow of the past.
...When I returned to the campsite, the idea was that I was going to take care of the butterfly and bring it back to health so it could fly again. I didn't know a lot about butterflies, but I knew they sapped nectar from flowers and were attracted to bright colors. So I poured out orange juice on the table next to it, and left colorful items near it, such as my Rubik's cube...
More recently, I've been learning to deal with my own sense of forgiveness, and the willingness to forgive myself for my past. There's a long history here. At one point in my life, one that feels extremely far away to me now, I stole some money to survive. I'm not "sorry" I did it in the sense that it seemed like the only option I had at the time and I'm glad I did survive it. I'm not even ashamed of having done it-- it's information I share with people willingly. But I haven't yet forgiven myself for it.
...The butterfly seemed to like the juice. It stuck its probiscus out and drank from the juice, but it still didn't move anywhere, walk around, or try to fly again. Someone told me that I shouldn't touch its wings; that if you touch a butterfly's wings, it can never fly again. The problem was that I'd already touched its wings when I'd picked it up...
I found myself earlier in this term not particularly willing to forgive anybody. I was still angry with myself over having gotten broken into back in September, and though I appreciated the help that had been offered me by people in the graduate program, there was a part of me which resented it as well; not because of anything specific anyone had done, but instead because of my own sense of debt over the gesture. I was feeling saddled enough with obligation and didn't think I could fulfill anything else. I was resentful about two of my classes, both of which felt rudementary and pedantic to me, something which was new for me in the program. And I wasn't acknowledging any of this at the time.
I was not, however, without resources. My experience dealing with my repressed memories, and my more recent experiences with relationships and financial issues had both taught me that I had to face up to myself whenever possible. It's at the point where if I know something is going on inside myself, I'm almost incapable of repressing it. It's as though my psyche knows better. So when my shadow presents itself to me, I do not run. I do not flee. I try my best to look it directly in the eye, as terrifying as that can be for me at the time.
...I spent the day with that butterfly, racked with guilt, thinking I had prevented it from ever flying again. I did my best to take care of it, hoping I could somehow cure it, "fix" it or otherwise make it well again...
What I've learned from this class, more than anything else, is probably that my own sense of the shadow has become much more clarified for me. I'm still divorced from certain aspects of myself. I haven't slept through the night since I was broken into. I'm still fearful about money, even though my financial situation is better than it's been in years. I'm still distrustful from time to time, even of people who have earned my trust time and time again.
...That night, I knew the butterfly was dying, and that there was nothing I could do to save it. I left plenty of juice near it for the night, and made sure it was comfortable, to the best of my understanding of what "comfort" was to a butterfly...
There are people in my history whom I've treated very badly. I haven't entirely forgiven myself for this, either. It's not about guilt-- guilt, to me, is an abstraction, a twisted reflection of responsibility and remorse, and does little to solve anything. It's about responsibility, and the internal questioning that I pull inside myself. It's about wondering who I am, and what made me the person I am today, and how I got here. It's about realizing that beautiful things can grow in dangerous and disturbing places, and that just because I came from a place of pain, of anger, of rage, doesn't mean that that defines who I am. Just because I've done cruel and rutheless things to survive doesn' t mean I need to follow that pattern.
...When I went to bed that night, I did not sleep. I did not dream. I merely laid in bed and bawled my eyes out. I could not remember the last time I'd cried like that. I don't know that I ever had before...
So when I look at myself and ask myself "who are you?" I am learning that the focus should not be on where I've been or what I've done. It's about who I am right here and now. And it's about admitting that not only am I a good person, that I'm a brave and powerful person, and that means responsibility, even if that responsibility that scares the hell out of me. And I think I've been using my shadow to run from that responsibility, to hide from my own potential for greatness, which is part of why I probably resented the immense show of respect that people gave me when they offered me help in rebuilding my life.
Now my shadow and I are dancing together, and I'm enjoying the dance. Fear is still present, but it's not a fundamental theme. I'm learning to lose my need to control the world around me and my environment without feeling lost or frightened, to embrace new things, to love and cherish without the sense of imminent doom which has bleed its way through the vast majority of my life.
I'm learning to hope without the need to expect misery, and I'm learning to play with my shadow, rather than to evade it. It's only with this understanding that I feel ready not to just be in life, moving from place to place like some spiritually undead creature, but to change and move and dance and live within the rhythms of my spirit and soul, jumping, leaping, grasping for the stars and the moon and the sun, knowing I'll sometimes be hurt, but that I'm strong enough to understand that the pain that comes with living fully is not just pain, but love, and joy, and growth.
...The next morning I awoke, with a sense of clarity. I was still crying. I was still sad. But I knew what I had to do. I went to the butterfly, which was still where I had left it the night before. I picked it up, gently, and walked into the woods where there was a field of brightly colored flowers, and left it there, in its own world, in its own space, and let it go. As I walked back to the campsite, tears still filled my eyes, but there was a comfort there, a place inside myself where I'd found solace. The long dark night was over, and I was ready to live again.