Self-Harm Butterfly

Every little thing you do is tragic, I thought, slamming the car door shut behind me. 

Every little thing about this choice – tragic. 

The dilapidated house that's not even his, with its fedora roof pulled low, its gasping, straggling plants dying in the front yard, probably from the same abandon he was about to enact on me. 

I don't like this, my upper chest says. 

I don't want to spend time here, my basement says. I'm not sure how important this moment is. 

But it's all part of the kaleidoscope view of your story, I tell myself. The moments of light don't mean anything if you're not willing to reveal the pockets of darkness. 

The pockets of darkness. The dark choices. The desperate ones. 

The version of you caught and pinned like a butterfly. 

How can we appreciate the regrowth of your wings if you don't acknowledge the times you unfurled them willingly and said Go ahead; rip them off. 

I think the truth of things is probably that you recognized yourself more without wings at that time. Your luminescence had become unsafe and your deep body knew it. So it thought, Where is the axeman? Just five minutes with him and I can forget all this pain, but that's not how it worked out, is it? It really just started with the axeman.

Then I had to remove the pins. 

I had to find it in myself to not be afraid to rise again. Which I did, and then it was more a syringe than a pin. More of a slow poison that never felt good. 

And when my wings grew back, I used them to pull myself from my velvet backing once again, but I took the pins with me. 

Because they'd become familiar. 

My recurring identity.

Until the thought of pulling one out spiked inside me a sort of perverse pleasure: this is who you are, this is who you are, this is who you are. 

Thank god my shoulder and back finally said If this is who you continue to be, we're going to end you. We'll just sever you from everything and be done with it. 

So I pulled out each pin and let them stay outside me, but my nerve endings remember. 

And as much as the rest of my body is glad to say goodbye, there is a place inside me that misses that sweet sting. That wants it desperately, when she wants to feel better.